Our Advocacy & Social Justice work
The Launch of a Special Unit
The Centre for Early Childhood Development’s work has, for many years, involved advocacy work. Where critical, urgent ECD issues have emerged, CECD was often a key voice in responding publicly and within the ECD NPO circle. Since early 2020, CECD has been working more specifically on proactive and strategic advocacy initiatives and identified a need within the ECD and NPO sectors for a specialised advocacy unit. In June 2021, Centre for Early Childhood Development launched the ‘Advocacy and Social Justice Unit’, led by attorney-at-law, Yusrah Ehrenreich.
The Focus of our Advocacy & Social Justice Work
The CECD Advocacy and Social Justice Unit will work to inspire action on early childhood development in South Africa, and globally. We will do this through amplifying voices in an intrinsically non-exploitative way, and mobilising and unifying the ECD sector around key demands and campaigns.
This will be done through prioritising and amplifying advocacy strategies:
- Rights education
- Communication: popular education, messaging, social media, traditional media
- Direct action
- Policy work: advocacy around content and implementation
- Legal advocacy and litigation
- Lobbying work
- Consultation within civil society spaces and amongst ECD practitioners
- Working with and strengthening existing coalition
Some of the Unit’s Media Releases, Open Letters and Op Eds
CECD joined the ECDReform campaign to protest and call for real reform in the ECD sector. This action called on DSD and DBE, asking for 5 real reforms for ECD, in reaction to the problematic Children’s Amendment Bill. For more information, click here: www.ecdreform.org.za
Our Latest Campaign – #PayTheECDReliefFunds
Given the appalling (virtually non-existent) roll out of the ECD Employment Stimulus Relief Fund package, we asked all ECD stakeholders to join us in putting pressure on provincial DSD, across South Africa by taking part in our national protest. The action took place across the country, in May 2021.
This campaign received significant media attention and coverage. Click on the image below to view more on this campaign.
