Education

Providing Education

ChildFund assists communities and local organizations to build the capacity to meet the educational needs of children. Benefiting from strong synergies with programs addressing Early Childhood Development, basic education interventions are a cornerstone of ChildFund's work.

ChildFund’s programs that support education include:

Constructing facilities such as schools, classrooms, and early child development centers;
Helping families meet the direct and indirect costs of education;
Equipping schools with textbooks, furniture, and teaching and learning materials;
Training teachers and school administrators;
Strengthening the capacity of community associations and parents to participate in and support education efforts;
Creating education alternatives for girls of all ages and out-of-school youth.

CHILDFUND’s Goals for Education

ChildFund investments in education are guided by four goals:

Equitable access to education – ChildFund expands access to educational opportunities by targeting vulnerable children and families.
Quality in learning experience – ChildFund emphasizes a holistic learning approach to enhance the quality of a child’s education.
Local capacity to manage the process – ChildFund helps build and strengthen the local capacity of schools, communities, and districts to influence and support educational processes.
Sustainability of outcomes – ChildFund recognizes that it is only a temporary agent for change in a particular area or country. Designing all programs to be self-sustainable by the host country, ChildFund empowers key actors and institutions with the essential learning attitudes, programs, services, management systems, and policy framework necessary to achieve education targets.

ChildFund’s Education Program Strategies

ChildFund promotes educational opportunities and fosters community support for education by incorporating the following strategies:

Helping children build the learning and coping skills needed to succeed in and beyond school;
Targeting at-risk children such as girls, HIV/AIDS orphans, ex-combatants and other vulnerable youth;
Improving the quality of education through teacher training and enhanced curriculum;
Encouraging complementary activities such as Dream Corners (mini libraries and reading clubs), storytelling, music and dance performing groups, and spaces for creative learning;
Providing alternative education for children and youth who have not been able to attend primary school;
Providing formal and non-formal education opportunities for children in emergency situations;
Building the capacity of families and communities to support and enhance educational and learning processes;
Integrating health, nutrition, income generation, and education for HIV/AIDS-affected children and youth.

Education in Emergencies

In emergency situations where there are no schools or where children face difficult circumstances such as full-time work, discrimination, or displacement due to conflict or natural disaster, ChildFund offers and supports non-formal educational opportunities in Child Centered Spaces. ChildFund’s Child Centered Spaces serve as safe havens where children can play and begin healing from the wounds of war, violence, and natural disasters. In northern Afghanistan, for example, these spaces have offered many children who had never gone to school a first opportunity to learn to read and write until government schools could open.

Examples of ChildFund's Educational Efforts

Boarding schools for Massai girls to encourage education instead of early marriage in Kenya.
Literacy courses for out-of-school youth and adults.
Formal and non-formal Living Values education.
After-school tutorial and mentoring assistance to children and youth.
Building schools, classrooms, and skills training centers for youth with no access to primary or post-primary education.
Peace-building schools and educational programs in conflict or post-conflict areas.
Establishing Child Centered Spaces in areas affected by war or natural disaster.
Providing Accelerated Primary Education for ex-combatants, children, and youth affected by war.
Skills training to help youth prepare for entry-level jobs in computers, carpentry, tailoring, secretarial, auto mechanics, and other job fields.
Direct assistance to children in need through high school scholarships and the provision of school supplies and school fees.
Promoting youth leadership and participation in community transformation processes.
Teacher training.

Early Childhood Education Background

The first eight years of a child’s life establish the foundation upon which the child grows and develops. Because these first years are an especially critical time in the growth of the child, ChildFund offers a variety of programs to ensure proper growth and development. These programs recognize the importance of investing early in children’s development as a means to build social equity and give disadvantaged families a better chance of breaking out of the cycle of poverty. Effective programs in Early Child Development (ECD) also increase the likelihood that other programs, such as basic education and health services, will be successful.

ChildFund-supported ECD programs focus on strengthening the synergies among children’s health, nutrition, protection, stimulation, psychosocial support, and age-appropriate play and learning opportunities.

In conjunction with ChildFund programs on maternal-child health and nutrition, environmental sanitation, adult education and income generation, ECD programs contribute to building the capacity of families, communities, and other stakeholders to create an environment where young children can grow and develop their potential.

Ensuring School Readiness through ECD

ChildFund’s ECD programs help children make a successful transition to primary school by building school readiness skills. ChildFund has always tracked the physical growth of children in communities where it works. In addition to monitoring weight and height, ChildFund has developed a culturally sensitive, universal monitoring scale that measures a child’s developmental progress in critical areas of child development including:

Social and emotional skills
Cognitive abilities
Gross motor skills
Fine motor skills
Communication and language ability

By monitoring a variety of developmental milestones, CHILDFUND can take advantage of critical opportunities to detect and correct developmental delays as early as possible in a child’s life.

ChildFund’s Principal ECD Interventions

Along with basic education, ECD is a cornerstone of ChildFund's work and a key element in ChildFund’s approach to building social equity. Around 11 percent of ChildFund’s investments go towards Early Child Development programs.

ChildFund promotes ECD through the following program interventions:

Advocacy at the local, district, regional, national, and international levels – Achieved through awareness-building efforts, Information, Education, and Communication (IEC) campaigns, newspaper and electronic discussion groups, organizing constituent groups, and conferences;
Capacity building at the local, district, regional, and national levels – Training those involved in providing education services, establishing ECD centers, enhancing parents’ skills, and training the staff of community-based organizations (CBOs);
Service Delivery – Providing services such as training and follow-up coaching for parents or caregivers; health, nutrition, early stimulation, and psychosocial support for children; and the training of facilitators and teachers;
Knowledge building – Using participatory studies such as action planning, focus groups on topics such as indigenous knowledge and practices, applied research and evaluation, and the publication of papers, to expand CHILDFUND’s understanding of issues related to ECD.

Examples of CHILDFUND’s ECD Programs

ChildFUnd promotes sustainable, quality ECD programs that are holistic, culturally relevant, and empowering for children, families, and communities. Examples of such programs include:

Albania and the Philippines – Promoting and supporting peace-building and reconciliation ECD programs in communities affected by conflict.
Mexico – Supporting home-based ECD services for children from birth to 3 years of age and for 4-5-year olds in communities where there is no government-ECD coverage.
Honduras – Training Guide Mothers, providing them with skills to promote sound child-care and to engage in different primary health-care activities and leadership roles in their communities, and providing stimulation exercises during home visits and group work.
Kenya – Adapting traditional child-rearing models to the needs of children living in nomadic-pastoralist villages in semi-arid and arid lands of the Rift Valley by enhancing “loipi,” practices whereby an entire community cares for and provides a nurturing environment for young children.
Guatemala, India, Bolivia, and Senegal – Serving neglected and vulnerable children who might not have otherwise received services.
Honduras – Proposing a promising initiative to the government that aims to create pre-basic curriculum in order to harmonize curriculum and teaching practices and facilitate the transition into basic education for young children.
Worldwide – Supporting community-driven ECD efforts to include and mainstream excluded children and promote the reconciliation of different groups. For example, ChildFund supports ECD programs that help care for and protect HIV/AIDS-affected children in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Zambia.

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