After 26 years of running Alfa Educare in Bayview, Ronalda Muller still talks about the future with the excitement of someone who is only getting started.
She wants to grow her centre, open another school, complete her bachelor’s degree in Foundation Phase and, one day, help develop other educators. Alfa Educare has recently graduated from the Grow ECD Small Business Programme with an impressive final STAR Assessment and, after years of operating without electricity, finally has light in its classrooms.
It is the latest chapter in a story defined by Ronalda’s determination to keep learning, improving and dreaming bigger.
26 years of putting children first
Ronalda started Alfa Educare with a simple belief: children deserve quality education, love, support and attention, and should be cared for as she would want her own children to be cared for.
The centre started small, expanding from one room to the next as more families entrusted their children to Ronalda. Over the years, she estimates that more than 1,200 children have passed through Alfa Educare.
But after more than two decades in ECD, Ronalda didn’t decide that experience meant she knew it all. She chose to keep learning.
About four years ago, one of her teachers suggested she look up Grow ECD. She made contact and later joined the Grow ECD Small Business Programme.
“I became re-equipped with all the training that we received. Some was training I had done before, but there was always something to learn.”
Ronalda embraced the training and mentoring and encouraged her teachers to do the same. Staff began meeting more regularly, sharing what they learnt and working together to improve their classrooms.
The changes began adding up. From stronger policies and classroom planning to new educational resources, assessments and the Grow App, Ronalda could see Alfa Educare becoming the centre she wanted it to be.
Finally having light at Alfa Educare
While Alfa Educare was growing in so many ways, one very practical challenge remained. The centre had been operating without electricity for years.
On dark winter mornings, Ronalda and her teachers relied on rechargeable lights, taking them home to charge and bringing them back again as early as 5:55 the next morning. For meetings and concerts, they sometimes had to hire generators.
Then Alfa Educare received an E SBox backup power unit, provided through a partnership between AutoX and Inyosi Empowerment. In 2026, the units were distributed as grants through community-based organisations, like Grow ECD, helping them reach small businesses and ECD centres where they could make a meaningful difference.
For Ronalda and her team, that difference can now be felt every morning. “Children’s safety has improved, they can see clearer. We’re saving costs, we don’t have to hire generators when we have meetings and concerts. We don’t have to take rechargeable lights home and charge them.”
But it is her next observation that captures what the change really means: “It’s nice to walk into a bright light and just see the smiling faces.”
Still growing
When Ronalda reflects on how much Alfa Educare has changed, she is particularly proud of what the Grow ECD sign outside her centre represents to her.
“When I put out my Grow sign, I put my shoulders back and lift up my head in acknowledgement: this is where quality education happens in my community.”
Grow ECD has been privileged to walk alongside Ronalda during this chapter, but she and her team are the ones who have done the work: attending the training, acting on feedback and choosing, again and again, to improve.
And graduation certainly doesn’t mean Ronalda is finished.
