Meet The Founder
Our Founder
Waheeda Essop is an Occupational Therapist with over 20 years of experience. She is passionate about stimulating children to optimise their potential.
Pre-COVID19, Waheeda had been actively involved in educating and empowering parents in knowledge about childhood development. She engaged parents during workshops and community events that gave her this platform. When the pandemic hit, her OT work came to a halt and in the heart of lockdown, the ECI online store was born.
Our Mission
At the ECI Store, we offer you a quality toy, reviewed by the experts that will not only improve your child’s development but offer a fun platform for natural play.
Why a toy you ask?
A toy is a child’s tool to grow and play. The value and potential of the toy is reflected in our store, setting you at ease in knowing that your child is not just playing, but that his/her brain and body is growing too!
Our Founder
Waheeda Essop is an Occupational Therapist with over 20 years of experience. She is passionate about stimulating children to optimise their potential.
Pre-COVID19, Waheeda had been actively involved in educating and empowering parents in knowledge about childhood development. She engaged parents during workshops and community events that gave her this platform. When the pandemic hit, her OT work came to a halt and in the heart of lockdown, the ECI online store was born.
Our Mission
At the ECI Store, we offer you a quality toy, reviewed by the experts that will not only improve your child’s development but offer a fun platform for natural play.
Why a toy you ask?
A toy is a child’s tool to grow and play. The value and potential of the toy is reflected in our store, setting you at ease in knowing that your child is not just playing, but that his/her brain and body is growing too!
In early years a child’s brain develops more than at any other time in life. And early brain development has a lasting impact on a child’s ability to learn and succeed in school and life. The quality of a child’s experiences in the first few years of life helps shape how their brain develops.
The brain is the command centre of the human body. A newborn baby has all of the brain cells (neurons) they’ll have for the rest of their life, but it’s the connections between these cells that really make the brain work. Brain connections enable us to move, think, communicate and do just about everything.
Different areas of the brain are responsible for different abilities, like movement, language and emotion, and develop at different rates. Brain development builds on itself, as connections eventually link with each other in more complex ways. This enables the child to move and speak and think in more complex ways.
The early years are the best opportunity for a child’s brain to develop the connections they need to be healthy, capable, successful adults. Engaging in meaningful play is thus crucial to allowing these synapses to form NEW neural pathways to development.