Research provides evidence that parent education delivered by local facilitators in community-based programmes can be implemented with great success (Baker, 2014; Carter, 1996, in Samuelson, 2009:6). Recent developments in the field of parent education programmes is the inclusion of local parents or practitioners as group programme facilitators in community settings (Day et al.,2012)
Working hand in hand with Early Childhood Development (ECD) Centres, ECD workers are trained on key messaging and facilitation skills to bring this programme to the caregivers/parents of the young children attending their Centre. Taking into consideration the constraints of the target population, this programme is filled with clever and colourful idea’s to bring about more Eating, Loving, Playing and Talking in South African homes where young children live. The EAT LOVE PLAY TALK sessions have been developed for ECD principals, practitioners and playgroup facilitators to engage in conversations and activities with parents and caregivers of children up to 5 years of age on the themes of:
- HEALTHY EATING
- BUILDING LOVING RELATIONSHIPS
- PLAYFUL LEARNING
- LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
Light-touch’ 8 month programme: Packaging public health messaging in a meaningful and practical way for parents of young children Resources that support behaviour change
Designed for scale.
Building capacity of ECD principals & practitioners as the facilitators - sessions run at their ECD Centres in communities. We have seen the programme awaken parents’ imagination to what is possible, where they are and with what they have, resulting in: parents/caregivers making small habit changes; making the healthiest nutrition choices possible for their young children within the constraints of their context; and better understanding of what they can do to set
their young children up for success which the basics of Eat Love Play and Talk.
We aim to scale through implementing partners and other training opportunities with NGOS who would like to run nutrition education with caregivers.
Please contact The Do More Foundation if you would like to be included in our next MASTER TRAINER TRAINING.
Alternatively, all our resources are open source for your integration into your programmes.
