Voices heard and lessons learnt: Exploring multiple knowledges and local participation in a community-based integrated early childhood development project in rural South Africa

Abstract

Following calls for diverse and contextual perspectives of the rich lives of young children, their families and communities from/in the Global South, this paper presents critical reflections emerging from a three-year (2016-2019) communitybased Integrated Approach to Early Childhood Development (ECD) project implemented in the rural Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. It explores the critical relationship established between a range of stakeholders involved in this project as reflected on by two community activists working together in the area of early childhood in the province for thirty years. This article highlights the importance of situating any community development initiative aimed at addressing early childhood provision in marginalised communities within a social justice framework. This includes identifying constraints inherent in unequal relations of power that risk undermining solidarity and agency for community stakeholders. It foregrounds accountability measures that emerge from local initiatives rather than from narrow predetermined project outcomes. This provides an opportunity to learn from, and engage with, experiences from the margins, thereby challenging some dominant narratives circulating, and often informing, early childhood policy and provision.

Preschool aged children’s experiences of integrated early years services in Australia: including missing perspectives

“…Long-standing examples of service integration models in a range of OECD countries include Sure Start and Early Excellence Centres in the United Kingdom (Bertram and Pascal 2001;Jupp 2013), Toronto First Duty in Canada (Patel et al 2016), Head Start in the United States (Kagan and Kauerz 2007), Integrated Early Years Services (IEYS) in Australia (Department for Education and Children's Services 2005), and the full integration of early childhood services in Nordic countries such as Sweden and Denmark (Moss 2000). More recently, there have been examples in developing countries, such as South Africa (Murray andRudolf 2019), Namibia (Ngololo Kamara, Kasanda, andVan Rooy 2018), Cambodia (Loizillon et al 2019), and India (Vikram and Chindarkar 2020); however, these service integration models are particularly focused on health care provision in early years settings.…”