Our approach
Prepare the adult. Transform the child's environment. Root both in the community.
Community Rooted Education (CoRE) is the model the Foundation funds. It is Montessori in its principles, practical in its method, and local in everything else.
The premise
Children rarely change in isolation. When the adult beside them changes, the room changes, and the child's chances change with it.
This is the insight a decade of field work kept returning to, and it is why CoRE is aimed at practitioners rather than directly at children.
Where CoRE came from
Designed by Educateurs sans Frontières. Refined in South Africa.
Community Rooted Education is an international programme led by Educateurs sans Frontières (EsF), the social-justice arm of the Association Montessori Internationale (AMI). It was designed in response to the urgent need for high-quality education in under-served communities around the world, on the premise that if the needs of children are met, a profound change in society can be realised in one generation.
CoRE was first piloted by EsF in India. It has since been developed and refined into the version now delivered in South Africa by the Indaba Institute, the Foundation's training partner.
CoRE represents a bottom-up approach to education and development that prioritises the empowerment and well-being of communities. By recognising and building upon the strengths and assets of local communities, it contributes to more inclusive, resilient and thriving communities.
What is most wanted is no patronizing charity for humanity, but a reverent consciousness of its dignity and worth.
The CoRE difference
It changes how the adult sees the child, by changing how the adult is taught.
Trainees experience first-hand what it is to learn in an environment that respects their needs. As they connect with their own agency, they open to the agency of the child.
CoRE sees the child as an agent of change with the power to offer something special to human society. Trainees are guided in observing the innate potential of the children they work with, and come to understand that the child is not a vessel to be filled or something to be moulded, but a complete person who can co-create a better world.
The training is practical and hands-on. Trainees are not merely told what to do; they are shown how to do it, in exactly the way they will later show children. They make the materials themselves, from found, recycled and locally available objects, so that everything can be recreated and mended at home.
The way the training is being conducted, the way that training accommodates everyone, so you can speak your own language and there's no judgement… the way they explain, it doesn't actually sit in your brain, it goes to your heart also.
Six pillars
What CoRE is built on.
Understanding of the child
CoRE is not a syllabus or a list of prescribed activities, but a way of supporting adults to shift their perspective on who the child is and on the relationship between adult and child.
Personal development of the adult
The training is practical. Trainees are shown how to do things in exactly the way that, back at their centres, they will show children.
Community relevance
Training is delivered, wherever possible, in the language or languages of the community, and the methodology adapted to the languages of the children served.
Local economy and production
Content is place-specific, environments are culturally relevant and materials are locally sourced wherever possible, encouraging investment in local economies.
Investment in relationships
Women trained in CoRE become part of an alumni community with continued access to support and ideas, so that they can keep improving their centres and shaping their communities.
Partnerships for delivery at scale
CoRE is supported by a range of social partners, including local government, the private sector and committed philanthropic funders.
How a programme runs
Four parts, in order.
Community preparation
Research and needs analysis, facilitated where possible by local authorities. Finding the resources that already exist. Brokering partnerships before practitioners are selected.
Practitioner training
Seven modules, one week a month, over seven months, so that practitioners stay in their jobs. Between modules they return to their centres and practise. Materials are made by hand during training.
Mentoring and in-service support
Facilitators visit each centre during the programme and for a minimum of five months after the final module. Each cohort's group stays active indefinitely.
Quality, monitoring and evaluation
Trainers hold a recognised Montessori diploma and specialised CoRE facilitator training. A checklist for practice is used at every centre visit. Child outcomes are measured with the Early Learning Outcomes Measure (ELOM).
The seven modules
What a practitioner studies.
The state of self
Recognising the importance of the adult's own state in guiding the child; rediscovering the potential of the child; an introduction to the Montessori way of being with children.
The environment
Preparing and caring for the environment; observing and approaching the child; protocols and daily routines; activities of daily living; contributing to community; caring for the Earth.
Language
The power of spoken language; kind communication; celebrating mother tongue; laying the foundations for literacy.
The senses and the intellect
Classifying sensorial perception; growing awareness of the wider environment; developing the intellect and executive thinking.
The world
Becoming conscious of the diversity of the world; care for all living things; celebrating our own and other cultures and traditions.
Observation and planning
Continuing culture and literacy; deepening observation and reflection to inform planning; lesson planning.
Order and number
Classroom management; the tendencies for order and exactitude; the mathematical mind; laying the foundations for numeracy.
An important distinction
CoRE is not a curriculum.
Practitioners keep the programme or curriculum they already use. CoRE does not seek to replace it; it enables the practitioner to treat each child as an individual, following that child's specific and unique needs.
The prepared environment
A classroom does not need to be wealthy to become beautiful.
The way the environment is prepared plays a large part in children's ability to develop their full potential. It uses what is available, serves the needs of the children and gives them freedom.
Shelves are ordered. Materials are within reach. Children choose purposeful work: pouring, sweeping, sorting, naming, counting, caring for a plant or a younger child. The room begins to communicate: you are safe here, you are capable, you belong.
Because the materials are generally found, recycled and upcycled, they are easily recreated and mended. Making them brings pride and resourcefulness to the practitioners as much as benefit to the children.
In the classroom
Seven things you see when the adult has been prepared.
Every CoRE module changes something you can see in a room. These are the seven we look for at every centre visit.
01 · Look for
Order
- What you see
- Every material has a place on a low shelf, and goes back there after use.
- What the adult does
- Prepares and keeps the room before the children arrive, so it can be read at a glance.
- Why it matters to the child
- Order outside helps a young child build order inside: knowing where things are, and finishing what she starts.
CoRE Module 2: The environment
02 · Look for
Materials within reach
- What you see
- A few chosen materials at a child's height, many of them made by hand from what is available.
- What the adult does
- Chooses or makes each material for a purpose, and removes what no longer serves.
- Why it matters to the child
- A child can choose for herself, without waiting for permission.
CoRE Modules 2 and 4
03 · Look for
Self-directed activity
- What you see
- Children choose their work and repeat it for as long as they need.
- What the adult does
- Shows how to use a material once, clearly, then steps back.
- Why it matters to the child
- Repetition by choice is how skill and self-control grow.
CoRE Module 4: The senses and the intellect
04 · Look for
The adult as guide
- What you see
- The adult watches more than she talks.
- What the adult does
- Observes, notes what each child is ready for, and steps in only when it helps.
- Why it matters to the child
- Being trusted builds confidence and independence.
CoRE Modules 1 and 6
05 · Look for
Language all day
- What you see
- Conversation, songs and stories, in the children's home language.
- What the adult does
- Names things precisely, listens, and gives a child time to answer.
- Why it matters to the child
- Language heard and used early is a foundation for reading later.
CoRE Module 3: Language
06 · Look for
Concentration
- What you see
- A child absorbed in one task, undisturbed.
- What the adult does
- Protects concentration: does not interrupt a child who is working.
- Why it matters to the child
- Deep attention is where self-regulation and later learning begin.
CoRE Modules 4 and 7
07 · Look for
Movement and practical life
- What you see
- Pouring, washing, sweeping, planting: real tasks with real tools, sized for small hands.
- What the adult does
- Breaks a daily task into clear steps, then lets the child do it.
- Why it matters to the child
- Purposeful movement builds coordination, care and independence.
CoRE Modules 2 and 5
Documented Photographs from Indaba's film and training show the practice, not measured outcomes. The modules are those of CoRE, Indaba's seven-month programme.
Why women
Educational empowerment leads to economic empowerment.
CoRE trains women who already care for children in their own communities, and in doing so invests in the women themselves. In the Winelands, where poverty, inequality and gender-based violence weigh heavily, that matters in its own right.
CoRE's facilitators describe a recurring pattern: women who at the outset are reluctant to speak, who believe anything they have to say is insignificant, and who by the end voice opinions, ask questions and trust their own intuition to follow the child. Graduates are offered a path onward, as Facilitators-in-Training and eventually as the people who train the next cohort.
CoRE also aims to help underpaid and undervalued women expand or establish sustainable micro-businesses, and develops skills that can lead to local production of furniture and learning materials for community early childhood sites. That is an aim we hold, not yet an outcome we have measured.
The change we are working towards
Intended impacts in our theory of change.
For women practitioners
- Socio-economic empowerment
- Professional development
- Personal transformation
- Self-actualisation
For children
- Improved neurological development
- Life-long learning
- Trauma resilience
- Improved educational outcomes
- Improved school retention
For communities
- Trauma reduction
- Improved health
- Reduced gender-based violence and crime
- Economic transformation
- A rights-based culture
These are aims, not measured results. What has actually been measured is on the Impact page.
Ambition · planned work, not results yet
How we know
Measured, and honest about the measure.
From the first module, facilitators use a checklist for practice at every centre visit, documenting the process and progress of implementation across the seven months, and for at least five months after. In 2024 CoRE's facilitators began training in the Early Learning Outcomes Measure so that children's development could be assessed as part of the programme.
In June 2026 an independent, accredited assessor carried out the first ELOM assessment of children in CoRE-affiliated programmes in Kayamandi. We publish that result with its limits attached, and we are working towards studies that follow the same children over time.
Next
The approach, as programmes.
What the Foundation funds today: practitioner training, mentoring, the facilitator pathway and independent evidence.