More than 20 of Save the Children’s teachers from across the Western Division worked with Ministry of Education this week to help create a user manual for early childhood teachers working in informal communities across the country.

The ‘Safe & Healthy Start. Grow Smart’ Manual will help communities wanting to start locally based education centres dedicated to preparing young children for formal schooling.  Many of these children would go without preschool without the dedication of these communities and teachers.

SCF’s education manager, Ruth Kuilamu, says “it builds upon the existing national Early Childhood Education (ECE) curriculum and will have accessible and informative tools for communities in Fiji to learn from.”

New areas to be built into the manual will include child protection, health of young children and positive ways to discipline students without the use of corporal punishment.

The experiences of our teachers who are already implementing this work in Save the Children centres across the country will also be included to help other communities learn and build upon this success.