By Alhagie Babou Jallow
Beneficiaries of the ongoing training of facilitators for the upcoming implementation of the new initiative, Positive Playful Parenting (PPP) programme, have applauded the National Nutrition Agency (NaNA) and partners for championing the welfare of children.
The Positive Playful Parenting programme is under component 3 of the World Bank-funded Rise Project, together with the Nafa cash transfer programme.
The project was designed to expand and enhance social safety nets to improve the incomes and productivity of the poor and vulnerable. The PPP initiative, a twelve-month programme, is targeting 225 communities in all beneficiary districts across the country. It aims to ensure children’s productivity is harnessed in society.
The ongoing capacity building for facilitators that began on Thursday, 06 February 2025, is concurrently rolled out in all beneficiary districts across the country. The activity is meant to enhance and strengthen their capacity in child caring, child nutrition, cleanliness in child handling, managing physically or mentally challenged children and related matters.
Participants are also being trained on how to make up local toys that were used by parents in the old days, which they believe can bring parents and the children closer.
Speaking to Gambia Daily at a training centre in Niorro Jataba, Kiang West, Hawa Badgie from Sankandi village, described the PPP project as timely, saying that it is also a way of reviving the good days where toys were made by the people themselves.
“The programme is very important, because we have learned and benefitted a lot from it. There was a lot that I didn’t know and understand, but since the initiation of this parenting programme, we get to understand many things. Our capacity on child-handling is greatly enhanced,” she revealed.
“In our society, we thought that the only thing that should be between a child and parent is full respect from the child,” she stated and further urged her fellow trainees to put the knowledge gained to good use while at home to make productive children.
Alieu Kujabi, programme Manager at the Programme Implementation Directorate of the National Nutrition Agency, outlined the significance of the initiative, stating that the objective is to bring unity, love and care for both parents to get close and be able to create time for themselves for the playful parenting. He said in the training sessions, they will be able to identify the type of toy they will use for children from 0-3.
Samba Keita, a representative of ChildFund-The Gambia and trainer, assured of ChildFund’s commitment to collaborating with NaNA to champion the welfare of children in all aspects of development. “In those days, we used to see children and parents sitting together creating story telling which has now faded away,” he said.
Highlighting further on the significance of the capacity building, Keita recalled that “in those days, any wrong that a child did, what came next was a beating; but we have learned that beating is not all that matters in our relations with our children.”
He concluded by encouraging parents to bring their children closer and show them affection. This, he said, will yield positive impact between them and their children.
Last month NaNA in collaboration with the Department of Community Development (DCD) and the Directorate of Social Welfare (DSW) embarked on orientation exercise, which was aimed at equipping Regional Health Team workers and the Multi-Disciplinary Facilitation Team (MDFT) to be able to identify two facilitators with basic criteria from each community.
