Introduction

In recent years, different stakeholders in the global development landscape have been grappling with the intersections of early childhood development and women’s agency and choices. This has included community stakeholders – such as CBO partners of Firelight, as well as funders who are seeking to understand both challenges and opportunities for synergy. For example, some of our CBO partners in Tanzania have described how women who work long hours (with early morning starts, long commutes, and late returns home) often have limited if any capacity to provide proper care to their babies and young children; the children are left at home with another child, or cared for by a maid. Other CBO partners have described how their programs with adolescent girls often serve girls who are pregnant or already have children of their own – and they feel unequipped to effectively support girls in achieving their own agency and wellbeing, while also parenting their own young children. On the other side of the global development landscape, funders have also been thinking strategically about the overlaps, intersections, contradictions, and possibilities of these two spaces – early childhood development and women’s agency and choice.

A critical aspect of Firelight’s work is centering and amplifying the perspectives, insights, and analysis of community stakeholders who are most affected by key issues. As part of this, we are proposing a comprehensive program of research examining the intersectionality of women’s agency and choices with early childhood development realities and initiatives in Tanzania. 

Our proposed community-level research study focuses on the intersections of early childhood development and women’s agency and choices in Tanzania. Both of these issues, and the overlaps between them, have been of deep interest to our CBO partners and our own team for a few years now. In our initiatives focusing on early childhood development, community members, CBOs, and Firelight staff alike have all seen the overlaps and intersections in the issues facing young children and their mothers and other female family members – including the bidirectional effects of child care and women’s economic empowerment, along with the negative impacts of the limited involvement of fathers and other male family members in child rearing. For example, some of our CBO partners in Tanzania have described how women who work long hours (with early morning starts, long commutes, and late returns home) often have limited if any capacity to provide proper care to their babies and young children; the children are left at home with another child, or cared for by a maid. Similarly, in our initiatives focusing on adolescent girls, CBO partners have often described how their programs often serve adolescent girls who are pregnant or already have children of their own – and they feel unequipped to effectively support girls in achieving their own agency and wellbeing, while also parenting their own young children. This is further complicated in different ways when girls have been forced into child marriage either before or due to their pregnancy. 

Guided by an intersectional, Global South feminist approach, and centering the perspectives, analysis, and thought leadership of community-based co-researchers, we will collaboratively gather, make sense of, and build contextually-grounded knowledge about how women’s agency and choices are affected by and affects early childhood development realities and initiatives in Tanzania. We will work with four CBOs across Tanzania as well as a research partner to: participatorily refine our learning questions; design our research methodologies; collect, analyze, and make sense of data, and build and validate a contextually-grounded and socially-relevant knowledge base. As a result of this research inquiry, we expect that CBOs, communities, government, and funders will have community-specific data as well as a collective analysis of the ways in which ECD and women’s economic empowerment overlap and intersect – and how these connections, contradictions, and/or synergies can be addressed, mitigated, or strengthened to improve outcomes for both young children and women across Tanzania and other parts of East Africa.   

We seek to use participatory methods at all stages, but even more fundamentally, we seek to be guided and driven by local researchers, community leaders, and practitioners in the conceptualization, design, implementation, and interpretation of research studies. Furthermore, as an organization and in our interactions with CBOs and others, we are engaging in ongoing reflection, work, and adaptation to improve equity and social justice both internally and externally.

This is a time-limited research study, and we expect the desired research outcomes to be achieved within the activities and funding under this grant. We do expect that this research will shed light on areas that are important and opportune for strategic investment by other funders and civil society actors, and we will use the evidence collected to advocate for more funding and more effective funding for community-based responses to early childhood development and women’s agency and choice in Tanzania and elsewhere.

This research is generously funded by the Willian and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

Our Goals

Our goal is to surface and understand the relationships, intersections, hindrances, and opportunities between early childhood development and women’s agency and choice, and disseminate, validate, and expand this knowledge base in order to both deepen our collective understanding and to inform responsive and effective advocacy, policies, and interventions in both these areas. As systemic change at the community level requires community ownership and leadership, our goal is for the knowledge generation and dissemination to also be led by key community stakeholders, who are critical voices in development discussions and decisions at local, national, and regional levels.

Towards this goal, our proposed research study aims to participatorily develop community-led, community-level understandings of – 

1. The values, beliefs, knowledge, practices, and systems that influence, support, and/or hinder the care, upbringing, and education of children (early childhood development);

2. The values, beliefs, knowledge, practices, and systems that influence, support, and/or hinder the opportunities, power, agency, choices, and roles of women at home and in broader society;

3. The current child care context and how it affects women’s agency and choices, including economic empowerment;

4. Initiatives (government, civil society, community self-help, private) and policies related to early childhood development, and the ways in which they affect, support, and/or hinder women’s agency and choices, including economic empowerment;

5. Initiatives (government, civil society, community self-help, private) and policies related women’s agency and choices, including economic empowerment, and the extent to which they affect, support, and/or hinder families’ care, upbringing, and education of their young children (early childhood development); and

6. The specific issues faced by adolescent mothers and the extent to which initiatives integrate their agency and access to choices with their roles and concerns as mothers of young children.

The partners we will work with to help achieve these goals

Community co-researcher partners - We will partner with four community-based organizations (CBOs) in Tanzania as co-researchers: Women Against AIDS in Kilimanjaro region (KIWAKKUKI), Sawa Wanawake Tanzania (SAWA) in Morogoro region, Tanzania Home Economics Association (TAHEA) in Mwanza region, and Thubutu Africa Initiatives (TAI) in Shinyanga region. These are CBO partners whom we have partnered with and funded in the recent past, and they have demonstrated experience in early childhood development and issues affecting women and adolescent girls, groundedness in and responsiveness to their communities, commitment to community agency, systems thinking, track record including commitment shown in previous partnership, readiness, women leadership, and meaningfully geographical dispersion across the country. These CBOs also have staff members who are particularly good at doing research and evaluation (e.g., good listeners, critical thinkers, community advocates). Each of these four CBOs has been invited and has enthusiastically confirmed their interest in partnering with us as community co-researchers on this study. Leadership from each CBO have also provided input into the development of this proposal.  CBO partners will serve as community co-researchers in the study. This means that they will be involved in influential ways at all stages of the research study – from the refining of the research questions and development of research methodologies; through the collection and analysis of data; and to the interpretation, validation, and dissemination of generated knowledge

Research facilitators - We will partner with a research team or consultancy firm with experience and skill in Global South intersectional feminist approaches and participatory methods, particularly in an African context. We expect to have two main researchers working on the project, with one or both based in Tanzania. The research partner will be identified in collaboration with our CBO partners. CBO representatives will be involved in the development of the scope of work/ terms of reference for the research partner, identifying and interviewing potential consultants, and in making recommendations around who to partner with. 

The research partner researchers will participatorily work with Firelight and CBO partners to refine our learning questions; design our research methodologies; collect, analyze, and make sense of data, and build and validate a contextually-grounded and socially-relevant knowledge base. The research partner will lead and facilitate much of the research process, provide guidance and advice, train and mentor community researchers, provide technical expertise and backstopping, and ensure the rigour and validity of the results. 

Local government and civil society – We will engage with and consult with relevant government officials and civil society stakeholders at all stages. The intent is for the research findings to be informed by, owned by, and used by relevant government and civil society stakeholders in meaningful ways.

Funders, civil society, and academics – We will establish a community of learning in which we will bring together academics, funders, INGOs that have expressed interest in these topics (early childhood development and women’s agency and choice) either separately or together. This community of learning will convene approximately every 3-6 months to introduce the study and gather feedback, provide updates at different stages including reflections on process and emerging learnings, and share initial and final findings particularly those that highlight gaps or opportunities for investment. The idea is that those who are in the community of learning will be part of the journey of learning along with us, they will have more involvement and thus more ownership over the results, and they will have a sense of the findings as they emerge – so they will be better positioned to internalize and apply the findings in their own work, be it in funding, practice, advocacy, and/or knowledge generation. 

Potential Outcomes of this study 

Through the process of this research study, we expect that CBOs and communities will have and/or develop the resources, skills, and supports needed to carry out a comprehensive, participatory programme of research that generates relevant, insightful, and helpful knowledge.

Through the process of this research study, we hope to see ownership, interest, and uptake of the research process and findings among CBOs, communities, government, civil society, and funders.

As a result of this research inquiry, we expect that CBOs, communities, government, civil society, and funders will have community-specific data as well as a collective analysis of the ways in which ECD and women’s economic empowerment overlap and intersect – and how these connections, contradictions, and/or synergies can be addressed, mitigated, or strengthened to improve outcomes for both young children and women across Tanzania and other parts of East Africa.

The knowledge base that will be built will be useful in the following ways to different stakeholders:

• CBOs and communities will be able to use the findings to guide and inform their work with young children, adolescent girls, and adult women.

• Government and civil society stakeholders in Tanzania will be able to use the findings to guide policy and program development in early childhood development, gender/women, and economic development.

• The broader ECD knowledge community will benefit from a rigorous, community-led, community-level, and nuanced understanding of the intersections between how best to support young children and how best to support their mothers.

• The broader Women’s Economic Empowerment sector will benefit from a rigorous, community-led, community-level, and nuanced understanding of the intersections between how best to support women’s agency and choices while also considering and integrating their concerns relating to their young children.

• Firelight, the Hewlett Foundation, and other organizations seeking to better support community-driven systems change for young children, women, and families in Tanzania will have a solid knowledge base and understanding to build from.