RESUMO
PIP: Community-based groups are organized around particular aspects of early childhood development (ECD), such as literacy, parent education, and early childhood activities. In the Colombian national program, community households call upon women to devote a portion of their home to organized child care for minimal material reward. The Indian Child Development Service subsidizes the payment of organizers; and Kenyan parents construct basic preschool facilities, provide school lunches, and subsidize a teacher. In such cases the government plays a subordinate role, while the burden of program maintenance is carried by the community. These programs share the characteristics that children and adults learn side by side; adult learning ranges from women's literacy, to health, organizational issues, or small-scale economic development; a strong cultural component emphasizes mother tongue language learning, indigenous child-rearing practices, and local working models; physical structures are in homes; capacity-building for the adults is central which will be transferred to other spheres of community life. In the remote coastal villages of Colombia, an organization called Promesa works with mothers on designing their preschool children's educational activities. Promesa began to confront other priority needs in the villages, especially in environmental health and malaria control. A 1990 assessment related that participants' pride, self-confidence, and ability to solve problems regarding the healthy development of their children increased; groups learned to make use of the physical, human, and institutional resources from their environments; and participants' children remained in school and performed better. Conclusions from a decade of loose experimentation suggest that through communication community women can be organized to provide basic early education and early childhood activities can help rural children over the cultural barrier of school.^ieng