Byangwa started a daycare to allow mothers work and earn

 By Prossy Nandudu

ALICE Byangwa Mujunga, is determined to put a smile on the face of mothers as they struggle to get some income for running their families.

A specialist in broad based early childhood education and care, Byangwa is the proprietor of Sanyu Prenursery and Nursery teachers’ training school in Kisugu, a Kampala suburb. She is supporting many mothers to earn for a living by taking care of their children and giving them soft loans.

Beneficiaries speak out

“I had a fi ght with my husband in 2008, which ended up in a divorce. At the time, we had two children aged three and one.

Because of the divorce, I had to fend for myself and the children, says 32-yearold Caroline Awori one of Byangwa’s benefi ciaries.

In Kisugu, Awori says, she had friends who were in matooke and charcoal business. She talked to one of them because she was determined not to go back to her home village Tororo, but stay in Kampala.

Mama Bernard then told Awori about Mother Child Daycare Centre run by Sanyu Pre-nursery and Nursery Teachers Training Institute.

Upon visiting the centre, Awori also learnt that she could borrow some money from the centre to start up a business, which she did. She says she can meet her children’s requirements and has also been operating a small food point since 2008.

What is MCDCC?

Community-based Mother Child Daycare Centre Service MCDCC is run by Sanyu Prenursery and Nursery teachers, who have been trained in broad based early child hood education. They handle children aged 0 to 8.

The centre has been in existence for close to 40years. It was started with the objective of helping mothers to work without worrying about where to leave their children while they worked.

The safety of children worries most mothers. With such a facility Byangwa says she wanted to help mothers to go to work so that they can improve their household income.

“I wanted to provide affordable community-based Mother Child Daycare Centre to enable mothers work and reduce poverty in their household,” said Byangwa.

According to Byangwa these are things that hinder the economic productivity of mothers, especially poor working mothers.

Fourty years down the road, many mothers in Kisugu, Namuwongo slums, have been able to create their own jobs, at the same time give their children a better life.

The birth of the centre

“While tutoring at Kibuli Teacher’s Training School, I realised that the people I had trained in pre-nursery and infant care were not applying the skills that I had taught them, affecting the proper growth of babies and children under their care,” said Bwangwa.

“I knew I had to set up an affordable facility that would promote and sustain safe childhood as the children’s mothers continued with their work. I had also realised that poor working mothers had many children and yet they were involved in labour intensive activities in unsafe work environments for their children,” she said.

A nany playing with a baby while others take a rest at the Daycare

To make sure that her efforts to create a safe environment for children were not wasted, Byangwa set up a centre that would help both children and mothers in semi-urban centres and slums.

She later sold her land in Kibuli and later acquired the Kisugu land, where the centre is. Some of the money that remained, Byangwa says she gave it out as loans with small interests to poor mothers so as to start up businesses and pay back later.

She also set up a poultry farm and bought two cows, but says they sell the milk because they only give children pasteurised milk.

Overwhelmed

After acquiring land and putting up a small structure, Bwangwa was overwhelmed by the number of children she received on the fi rst day.

“Can you imagine we opened the centre with 200 babies and 75 mothers from Namuwongo? The mothers were in need of fi nancial services and counselling.

Most of these babies were less than two months old. She says she used the opportunity to also sensitise mothers about family planning.

According to Bwangwa, this was possible after she offered small loans to them. “When these women are busy working or selling their merchandise, they go home thinking of how to make their businesses better, which keeps them occupied, unlike mothers who stay home all the time and submit to their husbands leading to increased childbirth,” adds Bwangwa.

This is affordable because it targets working mothers especially those with low income and their children who form the biggest percentage of Uganda’s population.

“It is the working mothers whose children are most at risk. The children are not well taken care of. Even if they are immunised, they often fall sick and some die from preventable diseases.

Without these centres, working mothers cannot reduce poverty because they spend little profi t they make on sickly children.

Others continue to have more children because poor mothers cannot negotiate for safe sex,” observed Bwangwa. She says, when a mother takes her child to a Daycare centre, she will work harder and use the little money she earns to look after her them.

This is prevents malnutrition in children,” added Bwangwa.

Challenges

Bwangwa says much as mothers appreciate the services at the centre, they have refused to attend adult literacy classes because they want to make money.

She also says the centre depends on the small pay that mother give to the centre as they drop the children off in the morning. She said it ranges from sh3,000 to 50,000 adding that they get foodstuffs from her farm.

Why a daycare centre?

Most mothers in slums work in dusty places such as markets, streets, stone quarries and maize mills which expose babies to diseases related to those work environments

Working mothers, whose babies are left under the care of maid or siblings put their babies at risk, so she decided to support them.ACT FILE

FACT FILE

Nominee: Alice Byangwa

Innovation: Founder of Mother Child Daycare Centre, Kisugu.

Quote: ““I knew I had to set up an affordable facility that would promote and sustain safe childhood as their mothers continued with their work. I had also realised that poor working mothers had many children and yet they were involved in labour- intensive activities in unsafe work environments for their children”

Contact: +256751051231