Lost your password? Please enter your username or email address. You will receive a link to create a new password via email.Lost your password? Please enter your username or email address. You will receive a link to create a new password via email.Despite the urgent need to scale early learning provisioning to ensure universal access for all children, South Africa’s restrictive regulatory environment and inadequate public funding constrict the availability of this service.
Although these enterprises fall within the purview of the department of basic education from a child development lens, the government should recognise their potential as vehicles for job creation. Gladys runs her business from a house in Chiawelo, Soweto. She started with just two children in 2019. By 2020, prior to the declaration of the national state of disaster brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic, she had four children in her care. Amid the globally escalating pandemic, Gladys, like many others, had to close her business. In 2021, she began operating again, and the number of children increased to six. Through word-of-mouth, her business has experienced steady growth.
Given these alarming figures, the role played by early learning enterprises becomes crucial as these can enable women to participate in the workforce by driving both job creation and parental employment. Gladys’s decision to establish her own business demonstrates her entrepreneurial spirit and confronts the problem of unemployment among young black women.