Rumphi lobbies capacity building for caregivers

Rumphi District Council has called on stakeholders in the district to consider training child caregivers in early childhood development (ECD) for them to implement the curriculum on ECD that government has developed.

Government has put in place a curriculum on ECD to offer standardised lessons to children before they enrol for primary school in the country.

Director of planning and development at Rumphi District Council Frank Mkandawire told journalists on Tuesdaythat the curriculum will be irrelevant if the child caregivers remain untrained.

“Child caregivers need to be trained because for them to use the curriculum, they need to be knowledgeable. The curriculum will be irrelevant if there is no capacity building for them,” he said.

Mkandawire said, as council, they cannot manage to train all caregivers in the district due to inadequate resources. As such, he said there is need for other stakeholders in ECD to help in capacity building for caregivers.

Association for Early Childhood Development in Malawi (AECDM) project officer Ruth Makwakwa conceded that lack of capacity building for child caregivers in the country is affecting progress of ECD.

Makwakwa said 45 percent of the caregivers are untrained, a situation which affects quality of ECD in the country.

“Out of the 26 800 caregivers in the country, 14 700 are trained. This is a challenge to ECD,” she said.

AECDM has ECD projects in Rumphi, Nkhata Bay, Mchinji, Ntcheu, Neno and Mwanza.