Over one million children made school-ready - but that is not enough

Since inception in 2008, The Unlimited Child has grown from five créches in Kwa-Zulu Natal to over 3 200 Early Childhood Development (ECD) centres countrywide. Although this has resulted in over one million children made school-ready, there are still millions being left behind who urgently need attention. This is why the Unlimited Child is passionate about ECD and has set their goals high to exponentially increase their impact, ensuring that no child is left behind.

In every child’s life, a critical learning foundation needs to be established by the age of six. If this window of opportunity is not realised, many children will face an almost insurmountable uphill battle not only as they enter school but as they progress through their lives. If South Africa’s education crisis is to be effectively addressed with a view to shifting the country’s socioeconomic future, it is crucial that ECD becomes a priority so that more children can achieve their basic education and have the opportunity to live an unlimited life.

Unlimited potential needs a foundation

Every child is born with unlimited potential but in South Africa some 64% of children who start Grade 1 will not finish school. Set against this harsh reality, The Unlimited Child is shifting the nation’s future through its proven ECD model that in 2020 achieved the milestone of making more than one million children school ready.

“Massive. Exponential. Shifting lives – these were the words used to describe The Unlimited Child at our inception. If a child does not have access to ECD, their potential in life will be a 3/10 with no possibility of ever reaching a 10/10, and no teacher in the world will be able to change this. Our work is urgent if we are to change our country for the better,” said Candice Potgieter, CEO of The Unlimited Child. If the early foundations of the Three Rs – Reading, Writing and Arithmetic – are not formed, a child will experience a lifetime of challenges. “A child under the age of six holds the greatest promise for change in our society. By investing in children from a young age, we invest in a society that stands the chance to thrive in 20 years’ time.”

The highly scalable expansion of the organisation has been achieved by unlocking the potential of pre-existing childminding facilities. Working with The Unlimited Child, these facilities have been transformed into well-functioning ECD centres through skills development, provision of age appropriate toys, and training of ECD practitioners to ensure that effective learning through play takes place at these education spaces.

Our model is shown to have the best impact in taking children from being at risk of never being school ready to being without a doubt school ready (this from an independent research study paid for by a consortium of the biggest investors in ECD in South Africa*). “From the outset, our unique model was developed with an ability to scale, by being easily duplicated across any geographic context. This is why today we operate across sub-Saharan Africa, having launched in Lesotho and Zimbabwe in 2021,” said Potgieter.

Neither the Covid-19 pandemic, civil unrest, nor the flood disaster in KZN has kept the organisation down. “We were able to recover and sustain over 95% of our ECD centre network by pivoting to supply more than R30 million in relief aid to make sure that not a single child was left behind,” she added.

“The high impact model of The Unlimited Child is a simple solution of skills development, toys and resources, mentoring and coaching so that every ECD centre exists with the single goal of school readiness in mind. We know that if we don’t pitch our goals high, children will be left behind, and we cannot let that happen on our watch because their future starts now,” concluded Potgieter.