STARS Foundation

Universal Children’s Day: 20th November 2012 – Keeping Children Safe – The Opening of a New Day Centre

Thanks to STARS’ support, Nepal GoodWeave Foundation (NGF) opened a new day care centre on 20th April 2012, providing early childhood education to small children of carpet weavers. The day care centre opened in the carpet cluster area of Attarkhel, Jorpati of Kathmandu, following a request from parents (carpet weavers) and factory owners.

The children, aged between 2 and 6 years old, have the opportunity to play and socialise with children of their own age group. The aim is to build the educational foundation of the children, maintaining a child friendly and healthy environment.

This kind of initiative is particularly targeted to toddlers who often crawl and run around or are being breast-fed while their mothers are busy weaving carpets. It is a situation which is obviously not only very dangerous and hazardous to the life and health of the children but which also hinders mothers’ work performance and productivity, resulting in low earning, pushing the family into the vicious cycle of poverty.

The new day care centre will be run by a local partner and will provide day care services and a pre-school environment to 50 children of carpet weavers from 12 different factories in the area. It was inaugurated by Mr. Binod Karki, President of GoodWeave International, in the presence of carpet workers, their children, factory owners, exporters and NGF Executive Members and staff.

The running of the day care centre follows an interesting model through which each party contributes in a different way: the parents of the children contribute to the midday meals, factory owners cover the house rent and the local partner is responsible for the day to day management. Nepal GoodWeave covers all the running costs (excluding house rent and midday meal) and is responsible for technical guidance, monitoring and evaluation of the programme.