Highlighting community-driven approaches at the East Africa Regional Early Childhood Conference
Throughout all our initiatives and grant cycles, we gather data and learnings alongside our community-based organisation (CBO) grantee-partners to demonstrate how they use the community-driven systems change approach to create lasting impact in their communities. What makes these evaluative efforts unique is an emphasis on creating space for CBOs and communities to speak to their own values and priorities, determine their own indicators of success and progress, and identify and share outcomes and evidence from their own perspectives.
It is for this reason that we are thrilled to be attending and presenting at the East Africa Regional Early Childhood Conference – to be held in Dar es Salaam from March 11 to 14, 2024 – along with representatives from two of our CBO grantee-partners: Jonathan Mungandi from Maranatha Grassroots Institute in Zambia, and Kenneth Laston Mumma from Children of Hope Organization in Malawi.
Firelight team members Carolyne Ng’eny and Dua Kazimoto will be presenting an overview of the collective work of our 12 CBO grantee-partners to catalyze community-driven systems change to improve early childhood development environments, interactions, and outcomes across Malawi and Zambia. We will share the context and background to this approach, how it works, and some of the truly transformative impacts we are seeing – not only in children’s outcomes, but in fundamental and sustainable shifts to the underlying systems and root causes that affect their development and wellbeing.
Maranatha Grassroots Institute, founded in 2005 to help people help themselves and others, offers skills training for early childhood development (ECD), counselling, and AIDS services. Maranatha will share about their experiences and results in mobilizing community-driven systems change to improve early childhood outcomes for young children in Kaoma district, Zambia. They worked with communities to surface the root causes of issues facing young children and have been collaborating with various stakeholders to support vulnerable households with undernourished children, support parents with income generation skills, train parents around responsive caregiving, and improve local learning environments.
Children of Hope Organization (COHO) started in 2017 to bring holistic growth of young children in Mulanje District in Malawi. Their goal is for children to live free from barriers affecting their development. COHO will share how they have been using community-driven systems change in remote parts of Malawi to address issues affecting young children such as inadequate health care, malnutrition, and limited access to ECD centers and services. COHO mobilizes community-led action to identify and address the root causes affecting ECD by training ECD center caregivers, improving access to learning spaces, working with the community to improve learning environments, and improving household livelihoods.
Our invitation to you: If you will be at the conference, we invite you to attend presentations by Firelight, Maranatha Grassroots Initiative, Children of Hope Organization as we discuss evidence of the life-changing results that CBOs and communities are achieving with and for the children and families in their communities. We will also share learnings and recommendations for others who seek to embrace community-driven systems change for early childhood development.
We hope to see you there!
You can visit the links below to learn more about these two CBOs and to view information on attending the conference.
Firelight – Community-Driven Systems Change