Yichang rolls out childcare services for toddlers

By Liu Jun, Yichang International Communication Studio

In recent years, Yichang has developed childcare services to help parents balance work and family life.


The city’s Early Childhood Development Project (ECD Project) offers community-based childcare services. A new national training course for ECD Project teachers and volunteers – “Love at the Beginning” – was launched in Yichang on Tuesday. This is the first time Yichang has rolled out this national offline training course organized by the All-China Women's Federation and UNICEF. More than 70 experts and volunteers from Jiangxi, Sichuan, Yunnan, Gansu, Inner Mongolia, Hubei and other provinces will take part in the training.

On Wednesday and Thursday, leaders from the All-China Women’s Federation, Hubei Women’s Federation, China National Children’s Center, and UNICEF visited nine Yichang communities and villages to review progress, and talk to volunteers about how children were developing.

Since 2013, All-China Women’s Federation has cooperated with UNICEF to implement the ECD Project for Chinese communities and families, aiming to provide them with support for scientific parenting in early childhood, and to facilitate children’s healthy development.

Yichang became one of 40 pilot cities in China for ECD at the end of 2013. The project has since spread to 29 communities and villages across the province. There are now 18 project sites in Yichang, benefiting more than 1,000 children, including those in the city’s poor and remote areas.



The Children's Home in Yichang's Aijia Village, established in 2014, is one example. UNICEF has provided it with play equipment, computers and picture books. Today, the Children's Home is a choice entertainment spot for families with young children in the village. The ECD local organizer, Ai Cui’e, nicknamed “Mother Ai” by families in the neighborhood, said: "After more than nine years of running the program, I can really feel the changes in how families raise their children and how their children's personalities are developing."

China has about 32 million infants aged 0 to 3 years old. Yichang’s efforts to provide quality childcare services epitomize the Chinese government’s commitment to lessening the burden for parents. Yichang has 169 registered childcare centers with 12,268 children enroned, covering the basic childcare needs of young families.