The centres would be furnished with desks and learning materials.

Additionally, the NGO will establish two Information and Communication Technology (ICT) laboratories for the Gbungbaliga Primary and the

Adibo Cluster of Schools, all in the Yendi Municipality in the Northern Region.

The Country Director of Children Believe, Esenam Kavi De Souza, who disclosed this, said the intervention formed part of the NGO’s commitment to lay a solid educational foundation for children less than five years.

To ensure the effective operation of the ECD centres, she indicated that the NGO would support in-service training of some teachers in the beneficiary schools on the new curriculum, including learning through play-based methodology.

Stakeholders’ forum

Ms De Souza disclosed this at a forum in Tamale in the Northern Region to share the activities and programmes of the NGO with various stakeholders and partners for the 2024 fiscal year.

A section of the participants at the event

The event brought together representatives of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), opinion leaders, educational institutions and the Ghana Education Service (GES), among others.

“We recognise the importance of starting right; the early childhood period provides a window of opportunity that must be maximised to provide the right foundation for children,” she said.

She called for more investment in Early Childhood Education (ECE) to lay a solid foundation for children, saying the future of every child depended largely on good educational foundation.

Commendation  

For his part, the Dean of Faculty of Education at the University for Development Studies, Professor Ibrahim Mohammed Gunu, lauded Children

Believe for initiating numerous interventions that were contributing significantly to promoting inclusive education in the country.

He said ECE was key to the holistic development of every child, irrespective of race, colour, disability or ethnicity.

He noted that when children were denied education, it deprived them of play and other critical things of childhood, such as cognitive, motor, physical, social, emotional and language development.