Day Care Centre

The Mother of Peace Day Care Centre aims to provide a fully functional Day Care Centre that addresses the needs of OVCs holistically, i.e., the physical, cognitive, emotional, educational, psycho-social, cultural, and spiritual needs of their childhood.

The day care centre will provide a facility in which OVCs can be:
  • Nurtured and loved
  • Afforded their inalienable right to play
  • Counselled and given therapy
  • Clothed, cleaned, and nourished
  • Given basic medicines
  • Educated (including life skills, e.g., hygiene, nutrition)


    • The day care centre will also: Relieve the poverty and psycho-social strain placed on child-headed or granny-headed households and the community at large, by caring for the younger members of the family during the day

    function (a) as a model; and (b) as a hub for closely-monitored, community-based, satellite day care centres, run by trained volunteers and community workers in the communities.

    Multiplier Effects: The Mother of Peace day care centre is not an insular project. By assisting OVCs in the day care centre we are also assisting the families, the extended families and the community at large. We will provide employment to our staff thereby assisting their families, their extended family and the community at large. In general terms, for every OVC accommodated at the day care centre and for every staff member employed there, the day care centre will be assisting eight members of the community. When fully operational, the day care centre will therefore assist up to 1438 people in the community.

    The impact will be far reaching, the strain on the communities and individual families will be greatly relieved. By ministering to the needs of the children and by arranging for partner or-ganisations to minister to the direct needs of the families, the situation in the communities will improve. The ripple effect of this should spread to the broader community.

    The day care centre project also aims to multiply its effects into other communities by acting as a hub for the establishment of satellite day care centres. Thus, the impact and influence of the day care centre will reach far beyond the immediate beneficiaries.

    Operation of the Day Care Centre: It is envisaged that in the first year the day care centre will care for 50 OVCs up to the age of six. In the second and third years of operation the centre can grow to accommodate up to 150 OVCs.

    The day care centre will operate from 07:00 through to approximately 17:00 daily from Monday to Friday.

    OVCs will be given three nutritionally enhanced or supplemented meals during the day as well as snacks at tea times. This will alleviate malnutrition and help to reduce the level of poverty at home.

    The OVCs will be bathed and their clothing washed and dried to reduce the spread of scabies and other skin diseases resulting from poor household hygiene and the lack of running water at home. Health care workers will be able to check and monitor the health of each child regu-larly for problems that can then be attended to.

    Daily activities of the OVCs at the day centre will follow a structured programme.

    Specialists will be available to assist in cases where counselling is needed (e.g., dealing with the trauma of death in their families). They will also be available to cater for children with spe-cial needs.

    The children will be collected at various specified pick-up points in their residential areas and returned home at the end of day.

    On Fridays, weekend food parcels could be supplied to the households of the OVCs. This would be implemented in conjunction with a needs-analysis of the household by a social worker. Outsourced relief organisations, e.g., AMCUP, have already volunteered food re-sources in this regard.

    By supporting both the children and the community in this way, the cultural, family and com-munity identities are maintained, and this allows for the development of each child in as natu-ral a way as possible.

    Areas to be Serviced by the Day Care Centre :

    The Mother of Peace Day Care Centre will operate from the Mother of Peace Community in Illovo. It can service the following areas: Mnini, Umgababa, Vulemehlo, Illovo, Kingsburgh, kwaMakhuta, Bhekulwandle, Adams Mission, and Amanzimtoti.

    Expected Results and Monitoring of the Day Care Centre:

    The Day Care Centre will provide holistic care, and a safe haven, for OVCs. In providing a safe haven, it will afford the household caregiver the opportunity either to seek employment, or, in the case of large, extended families, to provide respite for the grandparent(s), or, in the case of child-headed households, to allow the older children to go to school.

    It is envisaged that the operation of a Day Care Centre will do more than simply care for OVCs. It is expected that the poverty and psycho-social deprivation in the child-headed or granny-headed households will be alleviated. This expected result will also have positive ef-fects in the community at large.

    It is reasonable to expect an increase in the demand for enrolment at the Day Care Centre. In keeping with the objectives of the Mother of Peace Day Care Centre, however, it is envisaged that rather than straining the resources at one focal point, it is desirable and necessary to facilitate and empower suitably trained volunteers to start satellite day care centres in their communities. The Mother of Peace Day Care Centre can then function as a hub to these satellite community day care centres. To this end the current project can function as a pilot programme.

    In the first year the Centre will cater for 50 OVCs. During the third year, while the Centre itself can grow to cater for up to 150 OVCs, focus can be placed on the establishment of these sat-ellite day care centres. Once the Mother of Peace Day Care Centre is operating at full capac-ity, more resources can be used in setting up satellite day care centres in the surrounding communities.

    The vision, therefore, is not simply to help only those OVCs who can be accommodated within the Mother of Peace Day Care Centre, and their families, but to inspire and empower many other such facilities throughout the country.

    Monitoring and Evaluation:

    Using a wide variety of existing progress reports, indices, and testing instruments and proce-dures, the following will be observed and, where possible, measured regularly in order to de-termine the success in each area:

    health and nutrition levels, which can be determined by the nurse, so-cial workers and teaching staff. This will be done by observation of OVCs by teaching staff, by regular health check-ups by a visiting nurse;

    psycho-social well-being, which can be determined by the specialists and social worker. This will be done by observation of interaction and general behaviour, progress in various fields of development and by formal behavioural assessments

    literacy and numeracy skills, and other age-dependent cognitive development skills will be determined by observation and formal assessment by the teaching staff

    Ongoing and regular progress and development OVC reports will be kept by all stakeholders:

  • Health and physical development reports, e.g., clinic card, social worker reports.
  • Educational reports, e.g., teacher reports.
  • Emotional and psychometric reports, e.g., specialist reports
  • Home environment reports, e.g., social worker reports.
  • Day Care Centre management reports, e.g., managers' reports, finance reports.

    Evaluation of the running and management of Day Care Centre as a whole will also be undertaken by appointed external bodies, e.g., the Department of Social Welfare and Population Development, as well as by an independent assessor and an external auditor.