Socio-political conflicts in the Great Lakes Region of Africa have caused an upsurge in the refugees who flee to other regions of the world for safety. Consequently, refugee camps have become common contexts of child growth and development owing to the forced movements of people from their original homes and countries into foreign and unfamiliar ecologies. This article reports part of the findings of a larger exploratory sequential study that explored the nature and quality of refugee immigrant caregivers’ childrearing practices at Tongogara Refugee Camp (TRC) in Zimbabwe. This study reports the resilience in childrearing among selected refugee immigrant caregivers resident at Tongogara Refugee Camp in Zimbabwe between 2013 and 2016. Eighteen (18) refugee mothers and thirteen (13) elders purposively sampled among refugees from DRC, Burundi and Rwanda participated in a qualitative study that used focus group discussions and key informant interviews to collect data. The main finding of the study was that under forced migration conditions, refugee immigrant caregivers become resilient and continue to raise their children despite their traumatic profiles and circumstances. Their resilience emerges from the possession of cultural psychological resources that protect them from traumatic profiles interfering with their child rearing. In addition, it was evident that reconstructed family networks, support from refugee elders as vicars of culture and resistance to psychosocial risk were other mediating factors. The study concluded that psychological cultural templates and reconstructed social networks are strong protective factors for the resilience of refugee caregivers. The key implication for the study is that social actors delivering services in refugee camps should integrate relevant cultural heritage issues in their programmes because they act as protective factors for traumatic experiences that may interfere with child rearing. Sensitive child development programmes are not complete when they exclude children’s socio-cultural context as an important variable.

Zimbabwe adopted a policy for compulsory enrolment of 3 to 5 year-olds in ECD 'A' and 'B' grades in primary schools. However, some eligible children are not attending these classes for reasons which include poverty, disability and lack of special education needs constituting marginalisation. The current study sought to evaluate community knowledge about inclusive home-based Early Childhood Development programmes, assess rural communities' attitudes towards the establishment of inclusive home-based ECD programmes and identify practices that can be used to sustain inclusive home-based ECD programmes in selected rural communities in Zaka and Bikita districts in Masvingo province. Data were collected from 60 purposively sampled participants comprising 30 parents of children without known disabilities, 12 caregivers, six (6) ECD teachers, and 12 parents of children living with disabilities. Data were analysed through thematic content analysis. Findings showed that parents support the establishment of inclusive home-based ECD centres to increase access and promote inclusion of children with disabilities and that parents have the will and capacity to implement and sustain the centres. However, it was also apparent that communities need capacity building on how to manage the centres. The research recommends the establishment of centres that are managed by parents and supervised by ECD experts in local primary schools in the marginalised areas. These centres need to be monitored and evaluated for standardisation. This model has the capacity to increase access to ECD opportunities for children in marginalised areas and needs to be prioritised.

The majority of young children with a disability live in low- and middle-income countries, where access to inclusive early learning programs supported by governments or non-government organizations is usually unavailable for the majority of the population, who live in rural areas. This study explored the feasibility of leveraging materials and personnel available within local communities to provide inclusive early learning programs in rural Zimbabwe. Caregivers of young children with some disability were given the opportunity to describe their experienced challenges; ways in which they informally support their children’s early learning; and the types of skills and resources they were able and willing to offer to support the establishment and operation of a more formal group-based inclusive early learning program. Qualitative data were generated from a purposive sample of caregivers of children with diverse impairments (n = 12) in two remote rural districts in Zimbabwe. Themes were identified in the rich qualitative data caregivers provided during individual interviews. The challenges caregivers experienced included the failure of interventions to improve their children’s level of functioning, the lack of access to assistive devices, the perception that the local school would be unable to accommodate their children, and worry about the future. Despite these stressors, caregivers actively supported their children’s self-care, social, moral and cognitive development and sought ways to save the funds that would be needed if their children could attend school. Caregivers were also willing and able to provide diverse forms of support for the establishment and operation of an inclusive early education program: food, funding, teaching and learning materials, and free labor. The insights obtained from these data informed the design of local community-controlled inclusive early education programs and the types of support caregivers and children may need to participate fully in these.