I am working as a volunteer in a Community Based Organization in the section of Early learning on Kisima islands. Since early learning in Uganda is primarily in the hands of private providers with the government through the Ministry of Education mainly playing a supervisory role. Usually children of caregivers who are economically constrained on the islands are left without access to early childhood education.

In 2009 I started working with community members on the islands who identified structures for establishment of ECD Centers and further received financial support from a Community Based Organization for refurbishment.

To device ways of ensuring that the ECD centres are sustainable some strategies have been used and these include:

- Engaging community members to select their own teachers,

- working with the selected functional and committed ECD centre management committees who are able to conduct meetings regularly and on schedule,

- the quality of interaction and feedback that the teachers and caregivers have with the parents and/or caregivers,

- the quality of learning in the centre mainly determined by the skills capacity of the teachers in the centres, the dropout rates at the centre, the quality of learning environment and the financial contribution made by the care givers in the centres

To monitor all the above, a tool was developed as a road map to measure increased ownership and sustainability of the centres and this is used on a monthly basis.