Dear South Africa, it’s time we invest in our Future President

Last week I met our future president.

We ended up having a little conversation with each other and realized that there really is not enough being done in South Africa when it comes to building the future generation.

Our future president is a little girl named Thandie learning her ABC’s at the GROW with Happy Feet Day Care in Cosmo city. There were many potential future presidents, actors, doctors sitting in the room too.

They all were laughing, crying and playing together. It was a beautiful scene to watch… but it also made me very emotional.

You know what was so special about that day? It was their first day back at their revamped school.

A school that now has toys and educational material to help them dream even bigger and achieve it with the help of amazing organizations like GROW and MySchool.

About Grow:

GROW was established in 2013 to counteract the extreme lack of access to quality ECD in marginalised South African communities where there are hosts of working parents and pitifully few safe, quality child care options available. Many GROW with Educare Centres have stemmed out of grass-roots, home-based care for very young children where the infrastructure is sub-standard, child caregivers are untrained, over-crowded classrooms are the norm and educational resources are severely limited. 

With its ‘education-in-a-box’ and ‘business-in-a-box’ concepts, GROW delivers deep, ongoing intervention which results in well-supported inspirational centres of excellence that have positive ripple effects and help turn the tide against poverty and inequality in their communities.

Did you know?

The first five years of life is the most critical of all child development phases; with nutrition, care and opportunities for cognitive, physical, social and emotional learning laying the foundations for future adult behaviours and abilities.

The MySchool MyVillage MyPlanet community loyalty programme has launched a new partnership with the GROW with Educare Centres project in order to establish 21 high quality early childhood development centres (ECD) in the under-resourced communities of Cape Town and Gauteng over the next two years.

This is exciting news and one of the biggest commitments MySchool has made to a project with funding of almost R5 million!

Just thinking about how this is going to impact hundreds of children and create jobs for women gets me so excited.

The impact:

By the end of 2019, this project will impact almost 1900 learners across 77 classrooms in 52 schools in the Western Cape, Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal, and 218 jobs will be created.

GROW with Educare is bringing private school level ECD, as well as sustainable job creation, into communities where quality Educare is currently not accessible or affordable. 

Now you can be part of this amazing initiative by simply just shopping.

Yes, it is that easy to get involved and invest in the future president. 😉

You can use your MySchool MyVillage MyPlanet card to support GROW by simply nominating them as a beneficiary and then using your card every time you shop at any of the retail partners associated with MySchool like Woolworths.

If you don’t have a card yet, you can sign up for free at www.myschool.co.za or download the App and nominate GROW as one of three possible beneficiaries.

So now, there’s no excuse why you can’t do your bit for South Africa and its children, and the best part that in a tightening economy it does not cost you anything. You don’t have to do anything different – just continue doing what you do differently….