Jobs in Early Childhood Development (ECD. This programme provides a broader strategy for the manner in which ECD could be further strengthened in a way that supports greater levels of employment creation. This would be a longer-term plan as some of the funding still needs to be resolved: Programme Description: This agreement aims to fast-track, and scale-up existing initiatives designed to achieve universal access to quality, affordable ECD. Yellowwoods and XX Xxxxxx Trust (DGMT) will play a joint role in driving the initiative, on behalf of a broader (existing) coalition of social donors, large scale implementation NPOs and government partners national, provincially and locally. Interventions Implementing partners will work to implement this programme with at least three major initiatives that are able to rapidly scale up to and create and support a significant number of jobs: • SmartStart early learning social franchise; • Scaling up of public financing for Early Childhood Development centres, to expand the ECD subsidy to an additional ±5000 centres through the existing conditional grant, creating greater security of employment for ECD practitioners at these sites, and the conditions of possibility for additional jobs to be added at a subset of these sites; • As well as a range of subsidiary activities in the value chain of the ECD ecosystem that will indirectly benefit through the creation and scaling of these jobs. Factors critical to enable success: • The models that will be scaled and accelerated already has significant funding committed – drawing on a mix of existing funding models across the system. However, the total costs to deliver and sustain these jobs (and the ECD service delivery) requires between R4bn - R5bn additional allocation from the Department of Social Development (DSD) for child subsidies and programme costs as well as approximately R1bn from private sector donors. • Social partner recognised that Government budget cycles were restricted to shorter timeframes than may be possible in the private sector. Social partners therefore agreed that a funding model, which included private and public funding, would be pursued in periods of 2 years.
