Israel’s Agency for International Development Cooperation (MASHAV), in partnership with Ghana Education Service (GES) and the Tamale Municipal Assembly has introduced the Early Childhood Education programme in the Northern Region for the first time.
This is part of MASHAV’s commitment to laying a strong foundation for kindergarten education in Ghana.
Early childhood educators from four districts and the Tamale metropolis in the Northern Region, participated in a two-week intensive training course dubbed “Learning by Play”, focused on early childhood development.
In his closing remarks, Deputy Chief of Mission at the Embassy of Israel, Eyal Lampert said ‘MASHAV’s Early Childhood Education program has been running in Ghana for four years now. After upgrading early childhood education in Kumasi and Accra, it is exciting to witness it spreading to the North”.
Lampert attributed the success of the program to the dedication of the educators and partners Ghana.
He said MASHAV’s Early Childhood Education program uses low budgets but has great value, as it lays the foundations to create a generation of curious children, who will be critical thinkers and will be able to better understand the world around them.
The program also empowers the teachers, helps them become mediators between the children and the world around them, creates a rich and stimulating indoor and outdoor learning environment in the kindergarten, and brings the outside world into the kindergarten for the child to experience.
Lampert said the program builds a flexible curriculum and daily schedule based on the children’s world and provides opportunities for developing creativity and thinking skills in the child, as he is learning through play.
MASHAV’s early childhood education program in Ghana began in 2006 in Kumasi, in collaboration with Millennium Cities Initiative (MCI).
The program was extended to the Greater-Accra Region in January 2012. The Northern Region is the latest beneficiary.
The project, which started with five schools and 25 teachers, four years ago, has trained over 200 teachers and has been a tremendous influence in seeing preschool education in a different way in Ghana.
MASHAV has been working to improve lives and living conditions across the developing world for more than fifty years through capacity building and knowledge sharing. It offers technical assistance in education, agriculture, medicine, the advancement of the status of women, community and family, and other fields.
Since its inception, MASHAV professionals have trained close to 270,000 people from approximately 132 countries in Israel and abroad.