Authors: Irene Rizzini and Malcolm Bush, on behalf of the Brazilian project team

UKRI GCRF: Safe, Inclusive Participative Pedagogy (SIPP): Improving Early Childhood Education  is a partnership research project based at University of Edinburgh and undertaken with partners in Brazil, Eswatini, Palestine, South Africa. We are working with communities, local and national partners to promote change, for young children before school age.

The Communities

In Brazil the project exists in two communities, our main community Rocinha in the city of Rio de Janeiro and Jardim Catarina which is a comparison community in the city of São Gonçalo both in the state of Rio de Janeiro. Both of them suffer from severe poverty.

Rocinha is in the southern zone of the city of Rio. It is considered the largest favela in the country with an official population of 69,000 inhabitants though this is considered a substantial undercount. Residents place the figure higher pointing to the considerable transient population. The official number of children 0-6 is 8,026.  The lack of basic sanitation in some homes, the poor garbage pick-up, open sewers in some streets, and the huge problem of ventilation in narrow alleys and passages create a dangerous environment for the spread of infectious diseases. In January 2021, this community had the third highest number of COVID cases in the city. It also suffers from high levels of violence caused by drug traffickers, vigilante militias and the police.

Jardim Catarina is located in the municipality of São Gonçalo on the other side of Guanabara Bay from the city of Rio. It has 73,000 inhabitants of whom about 4,000 are children 0-4.  Like Rocinha, the community suffers problems with infrastructure especially an insufficient coverage of water and sewage systems. Other problems include inadequate education, health, and transit services and armed violence.. It is, however, less dense than Rocinha and children play in side streets.

Early childhood centers are crucial in both communities for the young children’s well-being and development and so that parents can go to work. They provide decent care, a variety of developmentally appropriate activities, and several meals for either the half-day or full day sessions. There are public creches and preschools and well as those called ‘conveniadas’ which are private but receive per diem payments from the municipalities. From earlier research CIESPI learned that in Rocinha early childhood centers suffer from insufficient and slow payments from the municipality, crumbling infrastructure including non-functioning toilets, shortage of appropriately qualified staff, and a too high density of young children for their cramped quarters.

The action research

CIESPI chose Rocinha as the main community because it has been a reference community for the research center for many years. Two of the research group members live in the community and a third has worked in it. This makes it possible to contact parents, early childhood staff, and key community members despite the epidemic although much of the contact has been necessarily online. CIESPI decided as a first project step to conduct a context setting survey of a few community residents. Given the current unique context, this survey focused on experiences related to Covid-19.

My godson is three and a half and has a very inquiring mind asking everyone questions. He was terrified. He cannot go out without a mask. He remembers better than the responsible adults. I reckon that this kid is already growing with the word fear, death, distance, no hugs, don’t get close, don’t get near your mother ¹

The main concerns of the adults about themselves had to do with the loss of income consequent to unemployment. Many families have seen their incomes diminish or disappear. In addition, many adults mentioned the difficulty of accessing such benefits as unemployment payments. In consequence, food insecurity and hunger have increased. In low-income areas, social distance and limited access to reliable internet, computers and cell phones have made young children’s access to education difficult at a time when all public creches and pre-schools and many private ones are closed. Mothers and other women child carers are under particular strain coping with food shortages, educating their children at home, and an increase in mental health stresses.

Residents report little assistance from the public sector to help with the consequences of the pandemic. Family incomes have diminished considerably especially in families with children.  On the other hand, we became aware of community resistance. We saw local movements and organizations embrace the banner of “ourselves for ourselves” to help families, friends and neighbors. Such efforts helped in the distribution of protective materials, basic food baskets and the dissemination of vital information. We noted that the community activists we spoke with said they felt isolated and lonely and welcomed the conversations with us.

More details about CIESPI can be found at www.ciespi.org.br which is both a Portuguese and English language site and which contains CIESPI’s first project newsletter.

Footnote:

[1] The quotations in this text come from people who either live and/or work in one of the two communities. We omit their names to safeguard their privacy.

The support of the Economic and Social Research Council (UK) is gratefully acknowledged.

Authors: Lizette Berry and Linda Biersteker, The Children’s Institute – University of Cape Town

Introducing Vrygrond, our South African partner community

UKRI GCRF Safe, Inclusive, Participative Pedagogies (SIPP): Early Childhood Education in Fragile Settings is a partnership research project based at University of Edinburgh and undertaken with partners in Brazil, Eswatini, Palestine, South Africa. We are working with communities, local and national partners to promote change, for young children before school age.

The South African partner community is Vrygrond, 20 kilometers from Cape Town central. Vrygrond or ‘free ground’, was one of the first informal settlements in South Africa. The Overcome Heights section still lacks municipal infrastructure – roads, sewage system and piped water. Though poverty stricken and subject to severe gang violence, the area is vibrant and bustling with informal businesses as residents try to eke out a living. The diverse population is around 42,000 people, with an estimated 5,000 children under 6 years. It includes many migrants mostly from Malawi and Zimbabwe and a mix of local Coloured, Afrikaans speaking households and African Xhosa speakers. Many faith-based and civil society organisations and coalitions are active in the area.

Vrygrond has a vibrant Early Childhood Development (ECD) sector and active ECD Forum where principals meet to share and discuss issues. True North, our local partner, provides training and support focused on young children. Prior to our Covid-19 lockdown, there were 37 ECD centres offering early learning and day-time care, though together they served less than 50% of the children in the area. Since lockdown, some eight centres have closed and by the end of 2020 only 860 of the previous 2,000 children were attending.  Centre quality varies and only eight of the centres meet government licensing requirements.

After delays due to Covid lockdown and closure of most services, the research team of the Children’s Institute and True North have identified a community advisory group to guide the case study work.  The first steps of our joint engagement will be to explore ECD practitioners, parents and children’s understandings of the key concepts of the SIPP project – safe, inclusive and participatory which will then inform the action plan.

An important goal is to enable synergy of the project’s activities with True North’s objectives; one of these is to reach out to families of young children not accessing ECD centres or programmes. This gap in services was exacerbated due to the Covid pandemic. Creative methods for engaging parents in early learning and promoting stimulating home environments, where young children cannot attend ECD centres, will be explored, developed and tested with community partners.

This rare opportunity to bring marginal voices to the policy debate in South Africa is at the heart of our case study.

The support of the Economic and Social Research Council (UK) is gratefully acknowledged.

Author: Dr Christina McMellon, University of Edinburgh

This post Launches the Early Childhood Education in Fragile Settings blog series and sets out the upcoming entries.

Safe, Inclusive, Participative Pedagogies (SIPP): Early Childhood Education in Fragile Settings

Early childhood education has increasingly been recognised as a societal priority. We know from research that children can be seriously disadvantaged when they – and their communities – face such factors as discrimination, violence, and poverty. We also know the value that focusing on early childhood and early childhood education can bring to addressing such disadvantages. We can support young children themselves, their parents and other kin and early years practitioners, resulting in improved respect for young children’s human rights, improved gender equality and inclusion, and better outcomes for both individuals and communities.

UKRI GCRF Safe, Inclusive, Participative Pedagogies (SIPP): Early Childhood Education in Fragile Settings is a partnership research project undertaken with partners in Brazil, Eswatini, Palestine, South Africa, and Scotland. We recognise the urgent need to conduct action research to understand these factors. We are working with communities, local and national partners to promote change, for young children before school age. Our work includes scanning early childhood policies at national and more local levels, building relationships with key community and national actors, and working with communities to develop their priorities for early childhood education and how to address them. Throughout, we are committed to the participation of children and their families in the research, exploring creative methodologies to involve them. In the end, we will develop an economic case for safe, inclusive and participative early childhood pedagogy.  As we progress with this project through the COVID-19 pandemic, we have found this agenda only more important for the communities involved than when we started.

Over the coming weeks we will be introducing the four main communities that the project is working with and will explore our progress and our plans. We would love to enter into conversations with you about the importance, opportunities and challenges of Early Childhood Education. Please get in touch at GCRFearlyyears@ed.ac.uk.

“The support of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), and the Economic and Social Research Council (UK) is gratefully acknowledged.”