The ECD vision is to enable the Republic of Rwanda to achieve its national development goals and to ensure that all Rwandan children attain their developmental potential. To achieve the Vision, the Government and its partners will pursue the following goal: to ensure all Rwandan children achieve their potential, are healthy, well-nourished and safe, and their mothers, fathers and communities become nurturing caregivers through receiving integrated early childhood development services. The ECD policy seeks to contribute to the following specific objectives: 1. To improve birth outcomes, reduce infant and maternal mortality and high fertility rates through the expanded use of family planning, pre-conception services, HIV prevention and care services and antenatal education, health and nutrition care services and the increased use of medically attended births as well as improved neonatal care; 2. to improve parents’ and legal guardians’ knowledge, skills and resources to support the development of their children; 3. to ensure infants and toddlers receive nurturing care and developmental services, and that young children from 3 years to primary school entry are well developed and prepared for success in school and life; 4. to prevent and reduce stunted growth, and improve child development outcomes for the most vulnerable children and children with special needs; 5. to reduce malnutrition and children under-5 child mortality and morbidity through preventive measures and basic maternal-child health care and nutrition services, with emphasis on neonatal and post-natal care and maternal-child nutritional rehabilitation services; 6. to reduce the incidence of childhood illnesses and diseases due to unclean water, poor hygiene and unhygienic waste disposal; 7. to ensure that all new-borns are registered, the rights of all young children are respected, and orphans and vulnerable children from birth to 6 years are identified and receive quality, well-coordinated child protective services; 8. to provide comprehensive ECD services of high quality through developing culturally appropriate and state-of-the-art curricula, training manuals, educational materials, teaching aides, and pre-and in-service training for teachers, community facilitators and supervisors of ECD programmes and services. 9. to ensure that all children are ready to begin school at the correct age and this may entail the special provision of rapid school readiness programmes. 10. To support the coordination, monitoring and evaluation of all processes, programmes and services related to ECD, and to promote the preparation of research studies on key child development issues. 11. To sensitise local authorities, opinion leaders, parents, communities and journalists about the importance of children’s early development, ECD Policy provisions, and their roles in assisting with planning, implementing, and overseeing essential children’s services. The short-term Objectives in order to achieve the above mentioned goals include: fewer malnourished mothers, low birth weight and pre-term infants’ reduction, antenatal and neonatology hospital and health care costs; improved neonatal care, better breastfeeding practices, parents education, and preventive and basic child health care services to reduce post-natal health treatment costs; and reduced need for nutritional supplements reduces nutrition care costs. In the long term, the Policy seeks to promote: improved health and nutrition, and lower lifetime costs to health care system; higher national economic productivity and greater economic competitiveness in the region and world; and less criminality and community violence, fewer costs to the justice system, and reduced need for prisons. The Policy emphasizes on the role of ECD in breaking cycle of poverty and to act as a great social and economic equalizer. Interventions in the early years have the potential to offset these negative trends and to provide young children with more opportunities and better outcomes in terms of access to education, quality of learning, physical growth and health, and, eventually, productivity. The document defines a policy and institutional framework to support the implementation of ECD at all levels. This includes actions to build capacity of community ECD centre management teams and develop manual for ECD centre management. Several stakeholders are implied in the implementation strategy, including the Ministry of Agriculture (MINAGRI), charged to build capacity of parents and community for food production & storage.
卢旺达 · 2011-06-01