Codesigning Community Led ECD interventions in Uganda and Ethiopia

The AfriChild Centre is currently implementing STRETCH (Strengthening Research and Evaluation Capacity to improve refugee children's wellbeing in Africa) an intervention that works to co-design strategies with the communities in Uganda and Ethiopia to advance ECD using local resources. It embeds a heavy community engagement component, community led research and ongoing monitoring. The intervention demonstrates that when power is shifted, when community strengths are acknowledged and space provided, local communities are able to mobilize and utilise their existing knowledge and resources to advance the causes they collectively care about. In this intervention, communities have built an ECD centre and are sustaining its operations.

The intervention is guided by a theory of changed that the following change pathway:

If caregivers gain skills and knowledge in nutrition, health, and positive parenting, and community systems provide enabling environments (ECD spaces, VSLAs, protection mechanisms), and refugee role models, storytelling, and peer networks reinforce positive caregiving norms, THEN, sustainable caregiver behavior change and a refugee-led ECD system that can be scaled up within will emerge.

The codesigned intervention in the first three months achieved the following; • Re-purposed a community church to serve as a temporary ECD centre and later completed building of a community ECD centre currently under construction. • Enrolled 87 children in early learning, with an average of 70 attending regularly. • Mobilized community resources to support the construction of an ECD center. Specifically, 3,800 bricks and UGX 210,000 were provided by the refugee households for a permanent ECD centre. • Established nutrition gardens and initiated household poverty mapping. • Built capacity of refugee-led organizations: Now and Tomorrow Uganda, Nakivale ECD Consortium, and Nakivale Researchers Association. • Co-designed a Research and Learning Agenda with the community (Twubakane group) and Now and Tomorrow to guide research and learning during implementation of the project.