HAVANA, Nov. 20 (Xinhua) -- "Children's Circle" and "Educate Your Child" are household words in Cuba, where parents benefit from these social pre-school education programs for their children.

    Created in April 1961 as an institutional format of early schooling outside families, the Children's Circle program aims at assisting working mothers. Meanwhile, the Educate Your Child program focuses on a non-institutional format of early schooling within families.

    Combined, the two programs now cover the early education of some 860,000 children, accounting for 97 percent of the country's total population of infants to six-year-olds.

    The Children's Circle started in Havana and now has 1,133 learning centers in 162 of Cuba's 169 municipalities.

    As its alternative facility available in all municipalities, the Educate Your Child program helps families to stimulate children's integrated development, especially in mountainous areas and in places where learning centers are too far away.

    The UNICEF representative in Cuba, Jose Juan Ortiz Bru, has a good opinion of these well-established social programs, saying that despite the long-standing economic problems in the country, Cuba has made sure that no child lacks health care or an early education.

    The Educate Your Child program has proven so successful that it is being emulated in other Latin American countries.

    Now, about 15 percent of the Children's Circle learning centers specialize in assisting children with special educational needs, while another 15 percent of the centers focus on assisting orphans.

    Maria de los Angeles Gallo, Cuba's national director of pre-school education, explained that requests to attend the Children's Circle learning centers surpasses available facilities.

    In 2007 alone, more than 60,000 requests could not be met.

    Therefore, the country has increased the importance of the Educate Your Child program, which trains parents to integrate early education into family life.

    The program, with a financial backing from the United Nations, is expected to give, through parents, stay-at-home children habitual, numerical, physical and intellectual abilities, Angeles Gallo added.

    Under the direction of regional supervisors who specialize in education, health and physical culture, families are taught how to stimulate integrated growth of their children through home-based activities.

    Cuba makes it a national responsibility to create suitable conditions for early childhood education, which are guaranteed under the constitution not only by a child and youth code, but by a family code as well.

Special report: Global News Day for Children 

Official Website of Global News Day for Children