Early education and nutrition
The Chikowa Nursery School was set up to help the children of neighbouring rural communities in early education and to boost their nutrition. Early Childhood Education and Care is an integral part of basic education and represents the first essential step in achieving the goals for education and nutrition for all. The basic education offered at Chikowa Nursery enhances these children’s readiness for primary school and positively influences later school and academic achievement. It equally boosts the literacy levels, and improves on primary school enrolment and development outcome.
Nutrition
Towards the end of last year, we included the Nursery school into MCSPA School Feeding Programme supported by Mary’s Meals International. This means that the learners in addition to the lunch they also get a Corn and Soya Blend in form of porridge on every school day. This has boasted the school and eventually increased the enrolment.
Parental involvement
The parental involvement in the school has been key. The parents pay MKW 6,000 every month. There have been monthly meetings where the parents have seen the progress of their children.
The main involvement with parents is through the preparation of the school land for cultivation and planting of groundnuts. This was done and harvested and sold at a good profit. This was a big effort but very successful. Next year, we intend to plant more hectarage of land to see if we can be able to make more profit. This will help with ongoing self-reliance.
