Sukkar targets children in kindergarten in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, 1948 Areas and refugee camps in Lebanon. It aims to improve the educational environment of kindergartens so that they are better suited to nurture children, and to provide the quality personal care and positive learning experiences that can lay the foundations for their success in school. To bring about this improvement, the program works on developing the skills of kindergarten teachers and staff, and upgrading kindergarten infrastructures to be more accommodating and “kid-friendly”, so the children can have access to various activities throughout the day. Moreover, the program establishes new, high quality kindergartens. The Anbar program also focuses on KGs in marginalized areas. Anbar worked with 240 KGs and provided 350 disadvantaged children with fees, uniforms and meals, successfully reduced the anemia rates among targeted children by 70%. Anbar also implemented 400 extra-curricular activities such as open days, leisure trips, and awareness workshops for disadvantaged students and parents providing them with much needed access to leisure, open space, and awareness. To address the issues of deteriorating early childhood education quality among the least advantaged, Anbar trained 37 KG instructors on efficient teaching methods.
Apart from developing 62 kindergartens, 40 of which are based in Jerusalem, Sukkar has had a substantial impact by acting as a facilitator of contact between Palestinians inside and outside of Palestine. Such connections have resulted in the production of 3 manuals that provide with an enhanced and locally sensitized understanding of holistic early childhood development. These manuals were developed by our four esteemed partners, the Early Childhood Resource Center of Jerusalem, Childhood Center of Al-Nassira, Gaza’s Abdel Mohsen Qattan Foundation and Lebanon based Mawared’s Early Childhood Development Program which has been disseminating the developed manuals across the Arab World.
Through Sukkar, we reached 6000 children, 250 educators, and 3,000 of the children’s families. To expand our reach to children, we introduced a mobile intervention, in the form of an “Arts Bus” which reached out to disadvantaged children from the West Bank and the 1948 Areas, and worked with children, educators and the local community using expressive arts approaches.
“During our last meeting in Amman, Jordan as part of Sukkar’s regional arm’s activities, the Welfare Association became a member of the Arab Program for Early Childhood Development’s Advisory Group, an initiative of The Arab League Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (ALECSO). It is worth noting that Sukkar’s professional development was highly rated as part of ALECSO’s mapping study of early childhood development programs from across the region.”, Maha Sader, Program Manager.
