Innovator urges ECD teachers to include sustainability in their lessons

Scilla Edmonds has spent almost half a century being actively involved in stimulating young children to be inquisitive about the world around them. Ms Edmonds has grown in her desire to see her watchword, “Be Sustainably Yours”, become a reality for every child, parent, teacher and school.

“Sustainability should be a concept established in a child’s pre-school years,” she said. “Sustainable development should to be firmly established in the curriculum and children encouraged to be active agents in environmental and sustainability issues.”

Ms Edmonds shared on “Sustainability and Entrepreneurship in the Early Years” with owners and educators from 45 Early Childhood Development centres (EDC’s) in underserved communities at a quarterly workshop organised by The Domino Foundation.

“From the early years, children must be prepared to deal with challenges with confidence, be encouraged to know they have the means to do anything they choose in life,” Ms Edmonds said.

“From the outset in their education journey, they need to learn the value of money - that is as much a life-skill as communication, initiative and problem-solving as a prelude to learning to read and write. Budgeting and saving should be taught by parents, grandparents and in the ECDs.”

Ms Edmonds is the author of a number of books intended to inspire small acts of sustainability. She entitled one of them “Be Smart, Be Money-Wise – A guide for young entrepreneurs”.

“Educators and parents need to see that children should be encouraged not to meekly accept the status quo in which they are being raised. They should know they can be change-makers and achieve whatever is important to them. My mission is to encourage schools at every level (and even adults going through challenges) to think differently and to see possibilities not considered before,” said Ms Edmonds.

Her aim at the workshop was to encourage the participants to develop these life-skills in their charges and to challenge them to consider participating in a 12-week Early Years Enterprise Challenge initiated and co-developed by Britain’s Teach a Man to Fish and supported by The Saville Foundation. She said this programme outlines how schools can include the Value of Money in the curriculum and start child-run businesses as alternative means of fundraising.

As a practical demonstration and using just a pair of scissors to demonstrate how simple encouraging enterprise can be, Ms Edmonds turned a discarded paper cup into a cute product the children could sell. She challenged the ECD practitioners to see waste differently and that there are great possibilities in recycling. To underline this, she pointed to the skins of fruit the participants had eaten during the day and then tossed into a bin. She said we could turn that into liquid compost or some other useful product.

She challenged everyone present at the workshop to embrace their critical responsibility to children to include and develop early business skills by starting their own Green Business at ECD level.

She can be contacted at scillaedmonds@vodamail.co.za and Domino’s ECD programme at ecd@domino.org.za