SmartStart and the South African Council of Churches Women’s Desk Gauteng Province (SACCGP) have signed a memorandum of understanding at the SACCGP headquarters at Khotso House in Marshalltown.
According to the MOU, both parties will cooperate and coordinate in the identification of church sites that will operate as early learning sites. These will then be made available to existing and new SmartStart practitioners. SmartStart has an existing network of almost 10 000 franchisees – early childhood enterprises ran by women from their homes and communities across the country. This new partnership with SACCGP will supplement these through the provision of additional venues that will accommodate more children.
“We have identified the church as a social partner that often shares the same interest in community development as we do and, potentially, as an entry point into communities with possible collaboration around making sure that we reach large numbers of people on the importance of the first five years of a child’s life. The church is a very powerful partner for us from this point of view,” said Grace Matlhape, SmartStart CEO.
“We envisage a partnership in which we popularise early learning, and together we can talk to church groupings about making infrastructure that is idle during the week, available for children’s learning,” she added.
In addition to the expansion of available venue space for early learning across the country, the partnership is also designed to be a vehicle for the education of communities – mainly parents and caregivers – on the importance of early learning in unlocking the future potential of all children. This will be done by further collaboration between the two organisations on the development of tools designed to incorporate early learning elements into Sunday School teaching. Finally, as part of this partnership, a venue partnership framework, along with supporting processes and tools, will be developed for adoption and use by all church organisations that are interested in making access to early childhood development a part of their social ministry.
“This partnership with SmartSmart is the beginning of something very important for us as the church in that most of the children in our churches can benefit from it and I hope that through this partnership, many of our churches will be able to establish similar initiatives that they can operate,” said Bishop Dr. White Rakuba, SACCGP Chairperson.
Only half of South Africa’s children have the opportunity to receive quality early learning in order for their potential to be fully realised. SmartStart focuses on quintiles one and two as this is the greatest population of three-to five-year-olds that are not enrolled in any early learning programme. The organisation recently released the findings of research into the value provided by access to quality early learning programmes and how this equips children with age-appropriate emotional, language, learning and social skills by the time they attend primary school.
Since 2015, SmartStart has recruited, trained, and supported over 15 000 early learning practitioner franchisees, reaching 177 000 children with quality early learning. By 2030, the social franchise aims to reach one-million children between the ages of three and five annually. For more information, visit www.smartstart.org.za.




