The need for a new approach
There is a global ECD crisis, and over 250 million children under five – most of whom are located in rural communities in the global south- do not have access to adequate education and care leading to poor health, poor education, child marriage, lost life opportunities and poverty.
This crisis is caused and perpetuated by
3 systemic problems
1. Parenting practices
Many parents do not provide quality nurturing care and learning opportunities because they (wrongly) believe they don’t have adequate resources or skills and because they don’t realise how important the early years are.
2. Lack of quality formal pre-primary provision
In Uganda there is no state funded pre-primary and so currently only 37% of rural children have access to formal ECD. The Government of Ghana has made fantastic strides and have 2-years of compulsory state-funded Kindergarten. But unfortunately the quality of kindergarten is hampered by very large class sizes, lack of teacher training and inadequate play-resources.
3. Government Policy
The dominant ECD approach is to invest in a professional workforce & formal pre-primary provision. Whilst important, this approach does not offer a complete solution. It prioritises “schooling” over learning and does not cater for holistic development and wellbeing. This approach also requires significant infrastructure, personnel,
training and is slow and expensive to scale.
Our solution
The key lever for change is to shift the mindsets and behaviours of parents so they realise that despite their poverty and limited education they have the power and the means to make a change.
93% of parents in our programme have less than 2 years of primary education. They are not paid for their work on the programme, nor are they provided with materials or infrastructure. But through are programme, they are willing and able to bring about significant and wide-ranging improvements in their children’s development.
Here's how it works
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Working with Government
The programme is run and sustained by government using a train the trainers approach. We support local government teams to train community-based trainers who deliver the programme in their communities. This approach means that the programme can be quickly and easily delivered to the hardest to reach communities and we can utilise the existing systems and structures to manage performance.
Benefits of our approach
The unique strength of our approach is that it empowers parents and government to deliver their own solution, harnessing the people-power already available.
This means it can be delivered and sustained at scale at the low-cost of just 23 USD per child per year, with costs due to fall as we continue to benefit from economies of scale.
“The Programme has contributed a lot in awakening parents to know the value of education. We now see increased enrolment of pupils in primary school because parents want their children to keep in school after their time at the play schemes." Tibenda Margaret, Senior Education Officer, Mayuge District
Where we work
We are currently working in Ghana and Uganda but are actively seeking new countries to expand to.
We have a partnership with Ghana Education Service to support them to scale the programme to 4000 rural communities to reach over 1 million children.
We also have a partnership with Mayuge District, Uganda and have supported them to scale the programme to all 410 villages in the district.