FEEDING EXCELLENCE: Buckets of ‘brain food’ and gardens of learning: How excellence is grown at ECD centres

To the Inceba Trust, early childhood development (ECD) centres should be more than just “eat and sleep” crèches, where children are fed sugary pap and put to sleep – they should be centres of excellence.

Since the nonprofit organisation’s rebrand from Valcare in 2016 it has been committed to holistically preparing children for Grade R and foundation-phase schooling through projects that focus on the body, mind and soul to slowly change ECD centres into centres of excellence.

The trust supports about 230 ECD centres mainly across the Western Cape with the exception of a few in the Northern Cape and the Free State, Inceba Trust chief executive Nielen Bekker told Daily Maverick.

The trust’s projects focus on helping create safe learning environments, training ECD teachers to deliver high-quality programmes and strengthening the bond between caregivers and children to improve children’s overall development.

It also focuses on helping children thrive by supporting good health and facilitating access to nutritious meals.

A child who is hungry is in “survival mode” and won’t be able to learn, Bekker said. Feeding a child is one of the best interventions one can do and the younger that children receive nutritional support, the better, he added.

Fighting stunting and obesity, taking children out of ‘survival mode’

Since 2023 the trust has conducted nutritional status assessments twice a year across affiliated ECDs, where trained fieldworkers measure the height and weight of all the children. Principals are also trained by the trust to eventually take the biannual measurements themselves.

The trust then assesses this data to identify if any children are at risk of stunting or obesity, and if even one child is at risk the entire centre will receive nutrition support in the form of breakfast porridge, Bekker explained.

The Inceba Trust, in collaboration with nonprofit company Outside the Bowl Africa, provides porridge to 3,488 children at 60 ECD centres across the Western Cape, according to Outside the Bowl founder Mark Maingard.

The company’s VitaKidz Instant Nutritious Meals porridge is manufactured by Kingdom Foods International, the food-manufacturing arm of the Outside the Bowl Africa organisation, at the latter’s production facility in Wellington, Western Cape, Maingard said. The porridge is certified by the World Food Bank.

According to Maingard, VitaKidz consists of extruded maize, soy protein isolate, vitamins and minerals. The meal is shelf-stable and requires no cooking since it can simply be mixed with water or milk before serving. This makes it particularly practical for ECD centres, where meals need to be nutritious, affordable, easy to prepare and safe to store and distribute, he added.

“They are running, they are jumping, they’re very active. It’s like brain food for them. They learn better and they concentrate better,” said Inceba Trust-affiliated Little Sunbeams Daycare principal Wendy Claasen about the benefits of the breakfast porridge she has seen.

“Think of unemployment. There are parents who have nothing at all. And when children eat at facilities, that is sometimes their only meal,” she added.

The trust is also partnered with the Western Cape Department of Health and Wellness to teach ECD cooks about the importance of the first 1,000 days of nutrition in a child’s life, Bekker explained. They are trained in hygiene, to prepare healthy food and do portion control.

No substitute for fruits and vegetables

“Although breakfast porridge is great, there’s no substitute for fruit and vegetables,” Bekker said.

In 2023 the trust established a vegetable garden at their offices in the township of Mbekweni, Paarl. Every year, in their garden, they train ECD practitioners how to turn a small piece of land into a garden. They are taught how to plant simple, sustainable vegetables such as spinach, beans, beets and peas, as well as crop rotation and composting, Bekker added.

The idea behind the food garden project is also to introduce children to vegetables at a young age, Bekker said. He recalled hearing about principals incorporating gardening into the daily rhythm of their centres. Claasen is one of these principals.

After being trained in 2023, Claasen runs her own garden at Little Sunbeams Daycare in Wellington. While her garden is not currently in its prime, in the past she has grown beetroot, peas, broccoli, spinach, spring onion and carrots, which was fed to the children, she said. Monique Louis, whose child attends Little Sunbeams Daycare, said she is grateful for the vegetables and porridge her child is fed, noting that her child is always full of energy.

Claasen said she also gets the children to actively engage with the garden, and in the past has let them plant seeds and water the crops with toy watering cans.

She hopes that this will influence children to convince their parents to buy more vegetables, and that children will feel encouraged to grow their own gardens as adults or even convince their parents to start growing one with them, like mother Destiny Jordaan’s son who now wants his own vegetable garden at home, she said. DM