Supporting Early Childhood Development Systems - Malawi, Tanzania, Zambia

  • P Project/Program

? Activity Status: Unknown

Key Information

Firelight has been systematically funding and building the capacity of clusters of CBOs across these three countries in sub-Saharan Africa – Tanzania, Malawi, and Zambia. Our Early Childhood Development (ECD) initiative began in 2010 with a two-year pilot in Malawi and Zambia and in 2012 expanded to include Tanzania. In 2018, we were able to expand our impact to four additional grantee-partners (formerly part of the “Strengthening primary education” cluster) in Tanzania. Within each cluster, we mentor, strengthen, and empower a Lead Partner – a community-born organization with greater capacity – to grow, lead, and mentor the cluster of CBO grantee-partners in their geographic areas. Our aim has been to help these CBOs to build, implement, evaluate, document learnings from, and improve effective, replicable, and potentially scalable community-based ECD centers and family-based training programs that are of high quality and provide integrated services for vulnerable children from birth to 5 years of age and families. We also work to build our CBO grantee-partners’ capacity to use data to improve the quality of learning and strengthen the evidence base for community-driven solutions for early childhood development. At the same time, we support CBOs to shift local norms and attitudes towards early childhood development and to sustain community support for the development and wellbeing of children and families for generations. We also support our CBO grantee-partners to actively engage with technical networks and government policymakers to advocate for evidence-based policy change at the local and national levels.


Lead Implementing Organization(s)

Location(s)

Sub-Saharan Africa

Malawi, United Republic of Tanzania, Zambia

Government Affiliation

Government-affiliated program

Years

2010 -

Partner(s)

Not applicable or unknown

Ministry Affiliation

Unknown

Funder(s)

Not applicable or unknown

COVID-19 Response

Unknown

Geographic Scope

Global / regional

Meets gender-transformative education criteria from the TES  

Unknown

Areas of Work Back to Top

Education areas

Other

  • Early childhood development

Other skills

  • Social and emotional learning

Cross-cutting areas

  • Economic/livelihoods (including savings/financial inclusion, etc.)
  • Mentorship

Program participants

Target Audience(s)

Boys (both in school and out of school), Girls (both in school and out of school), Youth

Age

Not applicable or unknown

School Enrolment Status

Some in school

School Level

  • Pre-school

Other populations reached

  • Fathers
  • Mothers
  • Other caregivers
  • Teachers - female
  • Teachers - male

Participants include

Not applicable or unknown

Program Approaches Back to Top

Life skills education

  • Social and emotional learning (SEL) skills building

Mentoring/psychosocial support

  • Adult (non-teacher) mentors

School-related gender-based violence

  • Training of school personnel (including teachers)

Social/gender norms change

  • Engaging parents/caregivers of students or school-age children/adolescents
  • Group activities with students or school-age children/adolescents

Program Goals Back to Top

Education goals

  • Improved academic skills (literacy and numeracy)
  • Improved social and emotional learning/skills and mindsets

Cross-cutting goals

  • Changed social norms
  • Improved critical consciousness
  • Reduced poverty/increase household well-being