During the period between prenatal through the first nine years, a child develops the physical, emotional, language, communication, cognitive, social, and value structures that lay the foundation for their lifetime. Thus children naturally depend on adults to nurture their development and learning needs (dependency). If adults are not able to do so, a child’s development and learning falls behind.
Consequently, this child will have limitations to overcome, some of which are insurmountable. Conversely, a child who achieves early developmental milestones and learning standards has the fundamentals for attaining the skills to meet their own needs as adults (independency) and, thereafter, to nurture the needs of the next generation
(inter-dependency). Our goal is to strengthen skills at family and community level in practices that support the development and learning of young children. Advancing the development and learning of young children in turn builds human capacity. Overtime, building human capacity results in communities that are able and willing to improve the environmental, social and economic challenges of their generation. By so doing “parenting” contributes to the wellbeing of this generation, and nurtures the next generation; hence - Parenting for a Sustainable Future.™
Our objectives focus on four inter-related problems restricting children from developing and learning at family and community level in Eswatini. These are: 1) insufficient understanding of how young children develop and learn, and factors that influence this, 2) limited financial management practices, 3) poor nutrition practices, and 4) inadequate infrastructure and management practices. Our program activities teach participants to use simple, effective, self-reliant and ecological practices to tackle these four inter-related problems at family and community level. As “giving things” can inadvertently further “dependency”, our activity methods are 1) training, 2) structured technical and material support and 3) mentoring; hence our motto - Do what you can, with what you have, now.
