Seriti Institute partnered with Care for Education and Londani Lushaka to provide children in Alexandra township with duplo sets.
On Thursday, 24 July 2020, over 400 children in Alex received Six Bricks packs sponsored by Care for Education. These are children that come in for lunch every day at the Londani Lushaka centre, a Seriti Partner. The packs were given as part of Seriti’s aRe Bapaleng programme which aims to promote parental participation in children’s learning and development from a young age, particularly since many children are not in school due to COVID-19.
One of the main values of aRe Bapaleng is learning through play, a value Seriti shares together with Care for Education.
“What we promote at Care for Education is learning through play… Normally we do playbox training and six-bricks training for ECD centres and schools and provide them with tools. Unfortunately, this has had to come to a stop during Covid-19,” says Karen Chambers from Care for Education. She says because of Covid-19 they decided to make a parenting booklet that helps parents know how to use duplo to help with their children’s development and provide six brick packs to families to use at home.
The Six Bricks pack contains six brightly coloured 2X4 stud bricks that children can use to “practice their memory, movement, creativity, and more.” The activities can be adapted, and parents can make their own activities to match the children’s skills and interests. Activities from the six bricks help in various developmental areas of a child, this includes cognitive, social, fine motor and gross motor skills.
Chambers says through interacting with their children over the six bricks parents see that learning does not only take place in the classroom and that it can be fun for children. She says being able to bring “learning through play” with their Six Bricks pack to the children in Alex is an honour for them.
“We are humbled by the amount of work Irene [Irene Chauke, co-founder of Londani Lushaka] and her team are doing. Thank you to Seriti for putting us into contact with a programme like this that we would definitely like to partner with in future,” says Chambers.
Alice Modiri, co-founder of Londani Lushaka says they are pleased to collaborate with Seriti and Care for Education because they want to bring development in the lives of the children in Alex. She says being a Seriti Partner has helped them make a greater impact in their community.
“Seriti is building us up. They found us as babies still crawling but as soon as they came along, we achieved so much,” says Modiri.
Below are pictures from the day:
