Childbase Staff Visit South African Nursery Project

Howard Lake | 5 November 2010 | News

PRESS INFORMATION
3 November 2010
Childbase Staff Visit South African Nursery Project
Childbase, a leading UK private nursery company, has pledged its commitment to raising funds for ‘Auntie’. A charitable organisation, Auntie works to create better opportunities for children in Africa and support the training and development of their childcare practitioners . Childbase took the decision to nominate Auntie as its 2011 overseas charity after returning on the 26th October from a week-long visit to South Africa. The trip resulted in Childbase being twinned with Cape Town Educare Centre which delivers childcare and nursery practitioner training to those living in an area of extreme social deprivation and poverty.
Childbase took 8 nursery practitioners on the trip to Cape Town, along with its CEO Mike Thompson, to help decide if the work undertaken by Auntie in Cape Town would inspire the staff in each of its 39 nurseries. After an emotional visit, the Childbase team returned to the UK to discuss their thoughts on what they saw in South Africa how they could best support such a project. After consulting across the business, the Childbase team agreed that they would gladly put time and effort into supporting the Educare Centre in Cape Town.
Auntie works with local African organisations such as ‘Ikamva Labantu’ to support the educational and childcare needs of children living in extreme social deprivation and poverty. The Educare Centre, run by Helen Lieberman and her team at ‘Ikamva Labantu’ is an excellent example of how local people are being supported and encouraged to strive for a better future for themselves and their children.
Commenting on the company’s decision to support Auntie, Childbase CEO Mike Thompson says:
“At Childbase we believe that every child deserves the best possible start in life and that a safe, secure and happy childhood is important in its own right but that it also provides the foundation for children to make the most of their talents and abilities as they grow. The work carried out by Auntie for African children reflects these beliefs and has been an important influencing factor in our decision to support them as one of our nominated charities.
“Seeing firsthand what is being achieved by Helen Lieberman and her team at the Educare Centre in Cape Town was a truly moving experience. We all came away from the trip knowing that this was a project that was worthy of our fundraising efforts and we look forward in 2011 to engaging the staff, parents and children from our nurseries to come up with some inventive ways to generate donations.”
Over the course of November the staff who went to South Africa will agree which aspects of the Educare Centre project they would like to support, with the ./guidance of those working at a grass roots level within the charity. From raising funds to support their training programme through to the daily requirements for food, resources and transport, Childbase will work hard across the company to raise as much money as possible for their new nominated charity.
-ENDS-
Notes to Editors
About Childbase
Operating 39 day care nurseries, Childbase is one of the leading private children’s nursery companies in the UK. Its culture is to develop, stimulate and offer a solid foundation for the children in its care and provide a strong network of dedicated, motivated, professionally trained staff.
Childbase remains at the forefront of early teaching methods, staff development and reward programmes, and is the only private UK nursery operator to present its staff with an employee share scheme, with almost 50% of the company owned by employees. www.childbase.com
About Auntie
Auntie is a ‘non profit’ organisation, set up on behalf of the Childcare Sector in the UK and Ireland, that promotes human and social development – investing in projects in Africa to improve the lives of the most vulnerable children living in extreme poverty through self sufficiency-not dependency.
Auntie supports the training and development of childcare practitioners in Africa, runs and supports crèches in the poorest South African township communities, supports afterschool and mentoring programmes for children aged 7 – 18, will sponsor primary education for those who cannot afford it, and provides vocational training to help young people into meaningful jobs.
At the same time Auntie will run projects in these communities that create economic self sufficiency, and will introduce a programme to ‘twin’ crèches in South Africa with nurseries in the UK and Ireland – bringing practitioners and children from both continents closer together.
Auntie aims to create positive relationships between nurseries in the UK and crèches in South Africa, and relationships between individuals sponsoring children in South Africa and the recipients of that support. And Auntie aims to involve the children in both countries.
Research into early childhood development shows that a good start in life is critical to the physical, intellectual and emotional development of children and that poverty in early childhood can become a handicap for life.
Rather than simply provide ‘charitable aid’ to support township communities’ childcare needs (which would leave these communities with an ongoing dependency), Auntie has created a model that will become self financing and therefore sustainable – and can be replicated and ‘rolled out’.
www.theauntiefoundation.org
For further information contact:
Eleanor Miller
020 8 224 1144
07966 139 737


el*****@ho***********.com

About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale. He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.