Every day a child attends preschool or school, they engage in learning experiences that are essential to their development. Attending early childhood education is not just a routine; it is an opportunity to engage in interactions, play, and discovery that strengthen their social-emotional development, language skills, and connection to the educational community, laying a crucial foundation for their future path.
However, in Chile we still face a significant challenge. Frequent absences during the early years of life disrupt the continuity of learning and make it difficult for children to take full advantage of the educational experiences offered to them. For this reason, promoting school attendance is not solely the responsibility of families or schools, but of society as a whole.
To that end, the Oportunidad Educational Foundation is launching the “Help Them Take Off” campaign, which aims to highlight the importance of attending preschool every day. Through this initiative, we seek to encourage families to take their children to school every day.
The campaign already has a track record of inspiring experiences and results. In its early years, the winners traveled to the U.S. to visit the Kennedy Space Center. In January of this year, the winning children had the opportunity to travel to England and visit the National Space Center in Leicester, as well as tour some of London’s main attractions. Many families would never have imagined this prize, which was made possible thanks to good school attendance.
This year, we will once again reward attendance with a trip to an international space center at a surprise destination, which we will reveal in a few days. The goal remains the same: to highlight that every day in early childhood education counts and that extraordinary opportunities can arise from that daily effort.
When a family ensures that their daughter or son attends school regularly, they are building much more than just a good attendance record. They are fostering experiences that lay the foundation for fundamental learning: language development and the first steps toward reading, exploration of their surroundings, logical and spatial thinking, and the strengthening of their motor skills. All of these experiences are key to equipping children with the tools they need to tackle the challenges of future educational levels.
Because sometimes the greatest experiences begin with something as simple—and as powerful—as showing up for class every day.