Roving Care Givers to host showcase

A one-day showcase promoting the significance of Early Childhood Development will be hosted in St. Vincent later this year by the Roving Care Givers (RCG).{{more}}

The showcase, one of five to be held in the Caribbean seeks to inform the public, Government Officials, Private sector officials, Non Governmental Organizations and Parents about how they can benefit from the Roving Care Givers programme.

On Wednesday, July 29, a meeting attended by Judith Hull-Ballah of the local RCG, event planner Jean Hill of Island Bliss Events Barbados, and Colleen Wint-Smith, Documentation and Communications Officer of the Caribbean Child Support Initiative Programme Barbados (CCSI) was held at the RCG office at Kingstown Hill to discuss plans for the showcase.

St. Vincent’s showcase will take place on November 17, 2009. According to Wint-Smith, the showcase will feature five booths giving information on training, toys and play, research, home visiting and stimulation, income generation and finally a call to action.

The official launch of the showcase will take place in Jamaica on November 6 and 7, 2009. It will then move to Dominica on November 10, to Grenada on November 13 and 14, to St. Vincent on November 17 and end in St. Lucia on November 20 and 21, 2009.

The main objectives of the showcase is to market the RCG programme to a wider audience, while highlighting the social and economic value of investing in early childhood education, as well as the effects of a non formal approach to early childhood education. Aspects of the RCG programme such as career opportunities, community linkages and

sustainability will also be presented.

St. Vincent’s RCG programme was officially launched in 2005 and is one of the six RCG programmes which operate within the region. The RCG is an informal childhood education programme that caters for children up to three years old who cannot access formal early childhood education. RCG also operates in Jamaica, Dominica, Grenada Belize, and St. Lucia.

The RCG programme in St Vincent operates in rural villages of Barrouallie, Sandy Bay to Overland; Chester to Byera and Colonaire. Judith Hull Ballah, however, expressed the hope that the programme would be extended to more rural villages because “the children are really disadvantaged” in those areas. (OS)