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A Directory of

Early Child DevelopmentProjects in AfricaSupported by the World Bank

D THE WORLD BANK 2001

Copyright C) 2001 The International Bank for Reconstructionand Development / THE WORLD BANK1818 H Street, N.W.Washington, D.C. 20433, USA

All rights reservedManufactured in the United States of AmericaFirst printing August 20011 2 3 4 03 02 01

The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this book are entirely those of theauthors and should not be attributed in any manner to the World Bank, to its affiliated organi-zations, or to members of its Board of Executive Directors or the countries they represent. TheWorld Bank does not guarantee the accuracy of the data included in this publication and acceptsno responsibility for any consequence of their use. The boundaries, colors, denominations, andother information shown on any map in this volume do not imply on the part of the WorldBank Group any judgment on the legal status of any territory or the endorsement or acceptanceof such boundaries.

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Cover, interior design and typesetting by Navior Design, Inc.

Table of Contents

Teams and Partners vAbstract viiPreface ixAbbreviations and Acronyms xiIntroduction xiii

1. Early Child Development-Increasing 1World Bank Investments in Africa

2. Freestanding ECD Projects 9

Eritrea: Integrated Early Childhood Development Project 9Kenya: Early Childhood Development Project 13Nigeria: Development Communication Pilot Project 17Uganda: Nutrition and Early Childhood Development Project 19

3. ECD Project Components 23

Burundi: ECD in the Social Action Project II 23Chad: ECD in the Quality Education Sector Project 27Guinea: ECD in the Basic Education for All Project 30Lesotho: ECD in the Second Education Sector Development Project 33Madagascar: ECD in the Second Community Nutrition Project 36Mali: ECD in the Quality Basic Education Project 38Mauritania: ECD in the 10-Year Education Sector Reform Program 40Rwanda: ECD in the Human Resource Development Project 43Senegal: ECD in the Quality Education for All Project 47

4. Sector and Strategy Work 51

The Africa Regional ECD Initiative 1996-98 51Country-Level Sector Work 53

Cape Verde and Guinea 53Ethiopia 57Kenya 60Mauritius 63

iii

iv A Directory of Early Child Development Projects in Africa

Children in Extremely Difficult Circumstances 65Children Affected by HIV/AIDS 65Children Affected by Loss of Their Parents 68Children in Armed Conflict 73

5. Capacity Building 77

Study Tour for African Policy Makers 77International ECD Institutes and Conferences 80Leadership Development: ECD Virtual University 83Information Technology 86

IMPACT 86Information Systems Strategy Plan (ISSP) 90

References 93Publications and Other Resources 95

Africa Region ECD Team (Core Team)

Name ContactMarito Garcia (Regional Team Leader) [email protected] Opper (AFTH4) [email protected] Pena (AFTH4) [email protected] Jaramillo (AFTH2) [email protected] Romero Rey (Consultant, AFTH2) [email protected]. V. Shantha (Consultant, AFTH1) [email protected] H. Storholt (Consultant, AFTH4) [email protected]

Human Development Network ECD Team

Name ContactMary Eming Young (Team Leader) [email protected] Kirpal (Consultant) [email protected] Surrency (Consultant) [email protected]

World Bank Partners in Early Child Development in Sub-Saharan Africa

The Norwegian Education Trust Fund provides major support for program development and knowledge

management for early child development. Other major partners are listed below.

BILATERAL DONORS Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, United States

MULTILATERAL DONORS ADEA (Association for the Development of Education in Africa), FAO, UNDP,UNESCO, UNICEF, WFP, WHO

NGOs (International) Action Aid, CARE, Catholic Relief Services, Save the Children Fund (Alliance),World Vision

NGOs/PVOs (Local) CRESP (Centre de Ressource pour l'Emergence Sociale Participative, Senegal), Dis-trict and National Centers for ECD, Twitezimbere (Burundi)

FOUNDATIONS Aga Khan Foundation, AMREF (African Medical and Research Foundation), BanyanTree Foundation, Bernard van Leer Foundation

PRIVATE SECTOR Chazal du Mee, Glaxo SmithKline

ACADEMIA Africa Virtual University, Kenyatta University (Kenya), University of Burundi,University of Victoria (Canada)

NATIONAL GOVERNMENTS Ministries of Agriculture, Community Development, Culture, Education, Family,Fisheries, Gender, Health, Human Welfare/Social Affairs, Information, LocalGovernment, Labor, Planning, Social Action/National Solidarity

v

Abstract

A Directory of Early Child Developnient Projects in Africa features lending andnonlending programs that are being supported by the World Bank and that are tar-geted to improve the situation of young children between zero and eight years ofage. In addition to the description of early child development (ECD) projects andproject components, it also includes economic and sector work (ESW) and capaci-ty-building initiatives that support project generation and implementation. Thispublication is intended to provide a comprehensive documentation of the approachtaken by the World Bank's Africa Region to strengthen early intervention programsand to provide lessons for future ECD projects. ECD programs present a new typeof intervention to reduce poverty for most African governments. In Africa, theseprograms are characterized by the high degree of community involvement, co-financing, and participation of civil society, including nongovernmental organiza-tions (NGOs). Implementation strategies typically combine key government sectorsand programs at central, regional, and district levels with nontraditional imple-menters of World Bank-assisted programs, including international and nationalNGOs and foundations. In ECD programs, the World Bank also increasingly pur-sues joint project implementation with United Nations agencies and bilateraldonors-for example, in collaboration with the World Health Organization(WHO), UNICEF, and UNESCO, but also with private-sector companies such asGlaxo SmithKline. These alliances are mandatory to meet the growing demand ofAfrican governments for early childhood programs. Developing a strategy toincrease local capacity and to improve the ability of the borrowing countries todesign, develop, and implement cost-effective interventions at a large scale will bethe challenge for the next few years.

vii

Preface

The World Bank is the largest single source of external funding to support edu-cation and health programs in developing countries. In recent years, it has put newemphasis on services targeted to children under the age of six.

Why? Children deprived of a healthful and stimulating start in life-as so manypoor children are-grow up ill equipped to handle life's challenges and are unlike-ly to rise out of poverty. By contrast, children well nourished in body and mindduring their early years increase their capacity to do well in school, at work, andat home. In boosting individuals' prospects, early child development (ECD) pro-grams also increase a country's stock of human capital-with positive economicconsequences for both.

Recognizing that children who are safe, healthy, and well nourished are morelikely to succeed later in life, the World Bank supports integrated service programsto address the many different needs of young children. Such programs provide themeans to support and monitor children's physical and emotional growth as well astheir social and cognitive development. In addition, they advise caregivers and fam-ilies on how to improve parenting skills and how to recognize and deal with signsof illness and malnutrition.

A Directory of Early Child Development Projects in Africa provides informationon programs that are currently being supported and funded by the World Bank andthat are targeted to improve the situation of young children between zero and eightyears of age. This regional edition includes both new projects and project compo-nents recently approved and updates on projects already in operation. It alsoincludes economic and sector work (ESW) and capacity-building initiatives to sup-port project generation and implementation. Under each section, projects are list-ed by country and in alphabetical order. Each project description includes the over-all objectives, basic data, context, interim goals and strategies to obtain them, andthe expected or documented benefits.

I would like to thank Simone Kirpal of the World Bank's ECD Team for coordi-nating the preparation of this directory in collaboration with the Africa Region'sECD Team, led by Marito Garcia. The Africa Human Development Management,led by sector director Birger Fredriksen and sector managers Dzingai Mutumbuka(AFTH1), Alexandre Abrantes (AFTH2), Rosemary Bellew (AFTH3), and ArvilVan Adams (AFTH4), provided policy guidance to the ECD programs in Africa.For online information about the projects described herein, please see the WorldBank's Early Child Development web site at http://www.worldbank.org/children.

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x A Directory of Early Child Development Projects in Africa

The Bank's ECD Team would also be pleased to receive your comments and ques-tions, which can be sent to us at [email protected].

Mary Eming Young, M.D., Dr. P.H.Early Child DevelopmentKnowledge CoordinatorHuman Development Network-Education

Abbreviations and Acronyms

ACC/SCN United Nations Administrative Committee on Coordination,Sub-Committee on Nutrition

ADEA Association for the Development of Education in AfricaAFTHD Africa Technical Families, Human DevelopmentAFTQK Africa Region Operational Quality and KnowledgeAMREF African Medical and Research FoundationBEAM Basic Education Assistance Module (Zimbabwe)CECs Community education centers (Guinea)CEDC Children in Extremely Difficult CircumstancesCHIN Children in Need NetworkCONAFE Consejo National de Fomento Educativo (Mexico)COPE Community-based Options for Protection and EmpowermentCRESP Centre de Ressource pour l'Emergence Sociale Participative (Senegal)DICECE District Centers for Early Childhood Education (Kenya)ECCD Early childhood care and developmentECCE Early childhood care and educationECD Early child developmentECDNA ECD Network for AfricaECDVU Early Childhood Development Virtual UniversityEPZ Export Processing Zone (Mauritius)ESRDF Ethiopia Social Rehabilitation and Development FundESW Economic and sector workFAO Food and Agriculture Organization of the United NationsFRESH Focusing Resources on Effective School HealthGTZ Deutsche Gesellschaft fiur Technische Zusammenarbeit (Germany)HD Human developmentHDNED Human Development Network, Education Sector (World Bank)HIPC Heavily indebted poor countriesHNP Health, nutrition, and populationICRC International Committee of the Red CrossICT Information and communication technologiesIDA International Development AssociationIEC Information, education, and communicationIMCI Integrated Management of Childhood IllnessesIMPACT Information Management Project for Action, Communications, and

TrainingISSP Information Systems Strategy PlanKIE Kenya Institute of Education

xi

xii A Directory of Early Child Development Projects in Africa

MIS Management information systemNACECE National Center for Early Childhood Education (Kenya)NETF Norwegian Education Trust FundNGO Nongovernmental organizationNTA Nigeria Television AuthorityQEFA Quality Education for All Project (Senegal)PEM Protein-energy malnutritionPRSP Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (World Bank)PVO Private voluntary organizationSDVPC Post-conflict Unit (World Bank)SES Socioeconomic statusSNNPR Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples Region (Ethiopia)UPE Universal primary educationU.N. United NationsUNAIDS Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDSUNDP United Nations Development ProgrammeUNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural OrganizationUNICEF United Nations Children's FundUSAID U.S. Agency for International DevelopmentWFP World Food Program of the United NationsWHO World Health OrganizationWID Women in development

Introduction

This publication provides an overview of the newly emerging portfolio on EarlyChild Development (ECD) projects in the World Bank's Africa Region. From a lend-ing level of US$8 million in the early 1990s, the ECD portfolio increased more than10-fold to US$125 million for the period 1997-2001, with 12 new borrowing coun-tries from all over Africa. A number of African governments are engaged in dialoguewith the World Bank, either to seek support for freestanding ECD projects or todevelop ECD programs financed as components within projects in education, healthand nutrition, or social protection. The development of these programs in the AfricaRegion has benefited substantially from the support of the Norwegian EducationTrust Fund (NETF), the Netherlands Bank Partnership Program, and the ItalianCooperation Agency.

With increasing interest in borrowing countries, it is important to keep track ofemerging operations to provide lessons for future ECD projects. The ECD programsemerging in Africa are qualitatively different from the earlier models in Asia or LatinAmerica. In general, programs in Africa are low cost, which is largely due to thehigh degree of community involvement, co-financing and participation, and the highlevel of participation of civil society, including nongovernmental organizations(NGOs). Implementation strategies typically combine key government sectors andprograms at central, regional, and district levels with nontraditional implementersof World Bank-assisted programs, including international and national NGOs andfoundations such as the Aga Khan Foundation, the Bernard van Leer Foundation,and Save the Children Fund. In ECD programs, the World Bank pursues joint proj-ect implementation with United Nations agencies and bilateral donors-for exam-ple, in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO)-to link up withflagship programs in the Integrated Management of Childhood Illnesses (IMCI) andwith UNICEF's nutrition and child growth monitoring programs. Furthermore, aninteragency partnership (the WHO, UNICEF, UNESCO, World Bank), which is sup-porting the FRESH initiative (Focusing Resources on Effective School Health) toboost school health and nutrition programs in Africa, will help ensure that theinvestments in ECD are sustained throughout all school years.

This publication documents the Africa Region's ECD portfolio, including capacity-building initiatives and sector analytic work that support the increasing demandfor these programs. Part II is a description of the freestanding ECD projects inEritrea, Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda. Part III features ECD project componentsthat form part of programs in the social sectors. For example, ECD is a major activ-ity within the Burundi Social Action Project, the Senegal Quality Education for AllProject, and the Lesotho Second Education Sector Development Project. Part IVdocuments examples of economic and sector work, both regional analyses and

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xiv A Directory of Early Child Development Projects in Africa

country-specific surveys. It also features the Africa Region's strategy to address chil-dren in especially difficult circumstances, such as children affected by HIV/AIDS,parental loss, and conflict.

Part V describes ongoing regional activities for ECD capacity building. In collab-oration with the international ECD community, the World Bank supports fourmajor initiatives: study tours for African policy makers; International ECD confer-ences and training seminars; the Early Childhood Development Virtual University(ECDVU), a new distance learning program; and the Information Management Pro-ject for Action, Communications, and Training (IMPACT), which supports thedevelopment of country-level knowledge bases and web sites on ECD. These initia-tives are designed to provide good practice knowledge of ECD, to promoteexchange among borrowing countries, and to improve the overall quality of thelending portfolio for Africa.

Birger FrederiksenSector DirectorHuman Development, Africa Region

1Early Child Development-Increasing World BankInvestments in AfricaMarito GarciaRegional Team Leader, Africa Early Child Development GroupHuman Development, Africa Region

Young Children: An Important Element in Africa'sEconomic Transformation

The children are our future. Yet today, Sub-Saharan Africa's 130 million childrenbelow six years of age (20 percent of its total population) are seriously at risk andhardly looking beyond tomorrow. Families are devastated by the AIDS pandemic,which left 14 million orphans as of 2000 (Joint United Nations Programme onHIV/AIDS [UNAIDS] 2000). To put this in perspective, the total number of AIDSorphans in Africa today is nearly the size of the population of metropolitan NewYork or Zimbabwe and larger than the population of Senegal or Malawi. Wars andcivil conflict within states increased the number of African refugees to 35 million in1999 (those internally displaced as well as those who fled their countries), 85 per-cent of whom are children and women. Infant mortality declined to 105 per 1,000live births in 1997, but this level is still the highest in the world (compared with 50in China and 40 in South America). Of the African children who survive throughage six, nearly 36 million (or one-third) are stunted, largely due to inappropriatechild-feeding practices, high morbidity, and poor child-caring practices (UnitedNations Administrative Committee on Coordination, Sub-Committee on Nutrition[ACC/SCN] 2000). About 35 percent are stunted as a result of persistent malnutri-tion before they reach the age of three-a situation that cannot be reversed and istherefore detrimental to lifetime health.

Under the present environment, Africa's children are not thriving. The very youngare suffering because of lack of care mainly due to poverty and the increasing num-bers of female-headed households, now roughly a third of reproductive-age females.More women are forced to work in the wage market and seek livelihood to survive.

Education has been declining over the last three decades. Primary enrollmentsstagnated or declined in 23 of 48 Sub-Saharan countries, and in 15 of these, primary

2 A Directory of Early Child Development Projects in Africa

enrollment rates are less than 60 percent (World Bank 1999). More than 95 percentof Africa's five to six-year-olds do not have any form of access to preschools, earlystimulation programs, or care facilities. Access to health care is low at 60 percent,with a high number of children suffering from childhood illnesses that are prevent-able: diarrhea, acute respiratory infection, malaria, measles, and severe malnutri-tion. The specter of low enrollment means that most of these children are at risk tobecome victims of the child labor market or a burden to society as out-of-schoolyouth and street children.

Africa has the youngest population in the world. Between 1995 and 2020, thepopulation of primary school-age children is projected to increase by 52 percent inSub-Saharan Africa, compared with a growth rate of 25 percent in North Africa andthe Middle East and a decline in absolute terms in all other regions of the world.Thus, in the next 20 years, Africa will be the continent with young children account-ing for the highest increase in the population.

Although many countries in Africa are committed to becoming democratic states,government institutions within countries are still fragile, leaving about 60 percent ofSub-Saharan Africa involved in some form of violent conflict. Wars have been intra-state wars, particularly since the end of the Cold War. One consequence is the shifttoward targeting the civilian population, which has resulted in increasing civiliandeath rates, including death rates of children (Opper and Storholt 2000). For thosewho survive, the conflict has a significant negative effect on growth and development.

Conflict leads to divided societies, widespread displacement, and decimated eco-nomic, social, and institutional capacity. It also wipes out past achievements and dis-courages new developments when it comes to capacities to care for young children.Under such circumstances, parents and other caregivers are prevented from provid-ing for children's most basic needs and the foundation for a child's early develop-ment. For children who are growing up in war-affected environments, it is thus par-ticularly important to build programs that foster basic cognitive and social compe-tencies and nurture physical, emotional, and social well-being in the early years.This poses an enormous challenge for early child development (ECD) program plan-ners and practitioners.

If Africa is to fulfill its economic development objectives, it must start with invest-ing in young children-investing early enough to maximize gains and in levels suf-ficient to spin children out of the intergenerational cycle of deprivation. Theseinvestments are needed to transform today's young children into human capitalassets for Africa's economic transformation in a lasting and sustainable way.

The good news is that many African governments are beginning to invest morethan ever in health, education, and social protection programs. An increasing num-ber of countries are now engaging in dialogue with the World Bank to address theneeds of young children through ECD programs and to sustain the benefits of earlyinterventions through health and nutrition programs at school age. These approach-es are essential to complement overall investments in the social sectors, particularlywithin the context of the Bank's debt relief activities through its HIPC (heavilyindebted poor countries) Initiative and the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP)discussions in the borrowing countries.

Increasing World Bank Investments in Africa 3

Early Child Development: An Investment to IncreaseCapabilities at Adulthood

Intervening early in the human life cycle by providing adequate care, stimulation,and support is a simple concept as old as humankind itself. A convergence of neu-roscience, behavioral, and operational research confirms the importance of earlyexperiences in the development of the brain and the unfolding of human behavior.Scientific evidence shows that most growth retardation occurs very early in life(Young 1997). ECD is crucial to human development, and by extension, to eco-nomic development. Nobel Laureate for economics, Amartya Sen (1999), arguesthat "strengthening the quality of life of children, influenced by education, security,prevention of trauma, can be crucially significant as part of development-andhence, the development strategy of nations should also focus on strengthening pro-grams of early childhood development, for a fuller life of children." Indeed, there isabundant empirical evidence, for example, from the United States, Europe, LatinAmerica, and Asia, that ECD programs over the last three decades have providedchildren a fairer and better start for life. ECD programs have positive long-term ben-efits including gains on future learning potentials, educational attainment, and adultproductivity. Young children from low-income families reached by these programstend to enroll in primary schools at the right age and to be less likely to drop out ofschool or repeat grades. They demonstrated comparatively better school perform-ance and cognitive abilities than poor children who had not benefited from earlyinterventions. As they increased their years of education, compared with those whowere not reached by early stimulation programs, they showed better health statuslater in life and were prepared to be economically active as adults.

The economic benefits of investing in ECD are substantial. A 27-year longitudi-nal tracer study in the United States estimated a return of US$7 in present values perUS$1 invested during the early childhood years. These benefits accrue as a result ofincreased lifetime earnings, reduced welfare costs, and reduced delinquency andcrime (Schweinhart, Barnes, and Weikhart 1993). In South Africa, a recent estimateshows that the benefits of ECD programs would exceed US$1 billion, a result ofimprovements in the efficiency in primary school (through fewer drop-outs andgrade repetition) and effects on better health as children grow into adolescence andadulthood. The economic benefits appear highest for ECD interventions targeted tolow-socioeconomic-status groups whose social indicators show severe deprivation,that is, those with high infant mortality, low school enrollment, and high malnutri-tion rates. In Latin America, early childhood programs are often seen as one of thebest ways to break the poverty cycle.

If education should provide hope for Africa's competitiveness in the new century,children need to be nurtured, given appropriate care at an early age, and preparedadequately for schooling to contribute successfully to economic transformation intheir adulthood. What, how, and how much children learn in school depends large-ly on the cognitive, social, and emotional competence they have developed in theearly years. Successful educational performance requires adequate preparation,which many African children lack because of inadequate nutrition, health care, cog-nitive stimulation, and care-giving practices. Today, services for young children in


Africa are almost absent, and the public sector is not allocating enough resources inrelation to the overall social-sector budgets to provide these services. In Kenya, forexample, less than 1 percent of the overall primary education budget in 1995 wasspent on preschool education. With support from an International DevelopmentAssociation (IDA) credit, the allocation to preschool education could be increasedto about 4 percent in recent years. Beyond the efforts for immunization before chil-dren reach their first birthday, the public health care systems in Africa are notresponding to young children's health and nutritional needs. The systems fail toprovide mothers with adequate knowledge in optimal child feeding and basic healthpractices, and very few are able to recognize danger signs of deficiencies in nutritionand micronutrients. As a result, most children are not reaching their full potentiallater in life.

Investments in ECD, followed by school health and nutrition programs to sustainthese gains, provide the support that poor children in low-income countries need tobreak the intergenerational cycle of deprivation and to take full advantage of whatis often their only opportunity to strive in the educational system.

The World Bank's Role in Supporting ECD Programs in Africa

The Africa Region's Human Development Department at the World Bank promotesECD programs as one of the key strategies for alleviation of poverty. Investments inthis field expand opportunities for the poor and are favored for public financingbecause of the societal benefits (externalities). ECD programs as an investment com-pare favorably in terms of economic rates of return in comparison with investmentsin the "hard sectors" such as infrastructure or agriculture (van der Gaag and Tan1998). The emerging portfolio for ECD in Africa is vested within the strategies ofthe three human development departments: Health, Nutrition, and Population(HNP), Education, and Social Protection.

The approach taken in ECD initiatives in the Africa Region is strongly gearedtoward sustainability of programs that are of low cost. Emphasis is put on assistingclient governments in identifying strategies to launch, implement, and support large-scale ECD programs effectively. Integrated ECD programs present a new develop-ment concept to most African countries. The first priority is to create an under-standing of the challenges of such programs and build the necessary in-countrycapacity for program implementation. Most of these programs are multisectoral andinclude nongovernmental agencies and grassroots organizations.

The World Bank's Africa Region is continuously engaged in policy dialogue toprepare new operations. A total of 21 new countries were reached in 2000. Seedmoney from the Norwegian Education Trust Fund (NETF) helped to generate sixnew projects as freestanding operations or as components of education, health, orSocial Fund projects in Burundi, Eritrea (freestanding), Rwanda, Senegal (two proj-ects), and Tanzania. Three additional countries have ECD projects in preparation(Chad, Guinea, and Mauritania), and another 12 countries are in various phases ofsector analytic work or dialogue with the Bank to initiate or add activities for ECD.Accelerating operations in Burundi and Eritrea became a priority in 2000, and proj-


ect preparation teams for both countries were given performance awards by theBank's Africa Region vice president.

The World Bank's ability to assist in leveraging high-quality initiatives for ECDincreases with the number of existing projects that provide important guidancethrough lessons learned. The new World Bank-supported projects and sector analy-ses are generating materials, planning tools, and professional expertise that can beadapted to other countries. Examples of relevant strategic analysis are cost andeffectiveness analyses of ECD interventions and papers describing the programimplications of assisting children affected by HIV/AIDS, loss of parents, or conflict.This type of sector work enables the World Bank to assess systematically the chal-lenges of designing ECD programs that respond to the effects of HIV/AIDS and pop-ulations with large groups of children who have physical and psychosocial disabili-ties (trauma). The programs recognize the need for flexibility and adaptability inunstable circumstances and intensities of conflict (before, during, and after conflict)to ensure a positive and lasting impact of ECD projects.

The World Bank's ECD Portfolio in Africa

The ECD portfolio of the World Bank in Africa appears in Table I below. As shown,the portfolio grew more than 10-fold since 1997, for a combined total lending esti-mated at US$125 million during the period from 1997 through 2005, increasingfrom one ECD project in the early 1990s to about 12 operations today. Theseinclude four freestanding ECD projects (Eritrea, Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda) andeight country operations (in Burundi, Cape Verde, Lesotho, Madagascar, Rwanda,Senegal (two), and Tanzania) where ECD is a component of larger projects in healthand nutrition, education, or social protection. Another four countries are conduct-ing dialogue with the World Bank (Chad, Ethiopia, Guinea,and Mauritania) seeking financial assistance to support publicinvestments in ECD. World Bank Lending for ECD in

Africa for Period 1990-2005(USS in Millions)

Characteristics of the Emerging ECD 150

Portfolio in Africa $125 million

The African portfolio has evolved into a different type of pro- li

gram with characteristics uniquely reflecting the African real-ity. One major difference, compared with the programs in Asia

75and Latin America, is that, in general, ECD programs inAfrica are less expensive, with annual costs per child estimat- 50

ed to be less than US$30 compared with more than US$300per child for most Latin American programs. This is partly 25

due to the fact that programs in Africa place more emphasis $8 million

on supporting new attitudes and behavioral adjustments inI ~~~~~~0

child-rearing and care-giving practices, and less emphasis on 1990-1996 1997-2005

providing direct services and external assistance for supple-


Table 1.World Bank Lending for ECD in Africa

FREESTANDING ECD PROJECTS-ONGOING OPERATION Period World Bank Credit (US$M) Total Project Cost (US$M)

Eritrea Integrated ECD 2000-05 40 49

Kenya ECD 1997-02 27.8 35

Uganda Nutrition and ECD 1998-03 34 42

Nigeria Development Communication Pilot 1993-97 8 10

World Bank Credit US$M Total Project Cost (US$M)ECD AS COMPONENT IN PROJECT-ONGOING OPERATION Period (ECD component)

Burundi Social Action Program 1999-03 12 (3.0) 13

Cape Verde Education Training 1999-03 6 (0.5) 9

Lesotho Second Education 1999-05 21(0.4) 28

Madagascar Second Community Nutrition 1998-04 27.6 (integral aspect*) 42

Rwanda Human Resource Development 2000-05 35 (0.63) 37

Senegal Quality Education for All 2000-10 50 (1) 250

Senegal Social Investment Fund and WID 2000-05 25 (integral aspect*) 30

Tanzania Social Action Fund (TASAF) 2000-06 60 (integral aspect*) 68

Mali Education Sector 2001-10 45 (1.8) 541.2

World Bank Credit US$M Total Project Cost (US$M)PROJECTS UNDER PREPARATION Period (ECD component)

Chad Education Sector 2001-10 Phase 1: 30 (1.5) 115Phase ll:TBD**

Guinea Education for All 2001-10 70 (Phase 1: 2.5; 498Phase li:TBD**)

Ethiopia Social Rehabilitation and 1998-04 120 (component-*) 280Development Fund (ESRDF)

Mauritania Education Sector 2001-10 50 (Phase 1:1.97; Phase II:TBD**) 188

*Amount to be determined, allocation is contingent upon the volume of community demand;TBD** (to be determined)-ECD component under preparation, cost to be

determined;*** the possibility of a freestanding project is being discussed along with the option of introducing ECD as a component of ESRDF.

mental feeding programs and physical infrastructure for ECD premises. The AfricanECD programs supported by the World Bank have the following unique features:

High Level of Community Participation. The Kenya ECD program, for example,emerged from preschools organized, financed, and run by parents. About 70 percentof the 26,350 preschools in Kenya are owned by communities. Parents construct thepreschool premises, hire the preschool teachers, and organize their training. TheSenegal ECD program is based on an innovative approach whereby communitiescontract the services of public-sector and nongovernmental organizations (NGO)providers for specific health services and for the training of community-based care-givers. Through the Burundi Social Action Program, communes incorporate ECDinto their formal action plans for development and reconstruction.

Multi-sector and Decentralized Implementation. Nontraditional implementationarrangements are emerging in the interministry implementation arrangements anddecentralized execution. For instance, the Eritrea ECD program is implemented by


the Ministry of Local Governments through its regional administrations but with

technical and monitoring support provided by the Ministries of Health, Education,Labor and Human Welfare, Information, and Agriculture. The Burundi ECD pro-gram is administered by a national NGO on behalf of the Ministry of Planning. Pro-ject implementation involves both subcontracting to indigenous NGOs workingdirectly with local government and community groups, as well as a national-level,interministerial committee that provides quality assurance and technical assistancein health, education, nutrition, and social protection.

Visible Role of NGOs in Implementation. In Burundi, project implementation ismanaged by an NGO, Twitezimbere, and is supported technically by a series of sub-contracts with local NGOs for training; information, education, and communica-tions (IEC); mobilization; and delivery of services at the community level. In theUganda ECD project, implementation at the 25 project districts is facilitated by 25nongovernmental and 100 community-based organizations competitively selectedthrough use of World Bank procurement procedures. In Kenya, five major NGOsand foundations (the Aga Khan Foundation, Catholic Relief Services, African Med-ical and Research Foundation [AMREF], Action Aid Kenya, and CARE Kenya)were competitively selected from 50 proponents. They implement pilot schemes toincorporate innovative programs, like the Aga Khan Foundation's Madrasa ECDprograms in Mombasa and Zanzibar, to improve the quality of ECD services thatare culturally appropriate. In Eritrea, the programs have visible roles for nationalNGOs, such as the National Union of Eritrean Youth and Students and the Nation-al Union of Eritrean Women, in program implementation.

Emphasis on Child Protection. The concern for displaced children and orphansfrom wars and children affected by HIV/AIDS is an essential component of AfricanECD programs. About one-fourth of the entire credit for the Eritrean project willsupport the reintegration of war orphans, providing assets to families that are host-ing these orphans and supporting care for the very young. In Uganda, Burundi, andZimbabwe, the innovation grants schemes are supporting indigenous, community-based organizations for family and community care of AIDS-related and otherorphans.

Partnership with Donor Organizations. UNICEF and the World Health Organiza-tion (WHO) are partnering with the respective governments and the World Bank inmany ECD programs. Additional partners playing a major role are UNESCO,UNDP, FAO, WFP, bilateral donors such as the Italian Cooperation, GTZ, the Nor-wegian NORAD, and Danish DANIDA, and large foundations involved in this fieldincluding the Bernard van Leer Foundation, the Aga Khan Foundation, and Save theChildren Fund. In Eritrea and Uganda, WHO is providing technical expertisethrough the delivery of its program for the Integrated Management of ChildhoodIllnesses, and UNICEF is providing ground staff for technical supervision of thedevelopment of manuals and tools for monitoring of child growth.


Important Role of Communication Strategies for Raising Awareness. Strategic com-munications are systematically applied to promote and reinforce the transmission ofsocietal knowledge and positive indigenous practices on child rearing, feeding andnutrition, and psychosocial and cognitive stimulation in order to change adversebehavior of child caregivers. All programs in the new ECD portfolio in Africa havestrategic communications as a major component, using face-to-face communica-tions as well as radio, community theater, and TV where available and other masscommunications techniques, as in the Nigeria project. The Africa programs active-ly promote partnership with the private sector, where communications expertiseresides.

Strong Linkages with School Health and Nutrition Programs. In a majority of coun-tries, ECD programs are linked with existing or planned school health programs tosustain the gains of the investments during the early years. The school system allowsremarkably cost-effective interventions at school in health and nutrition, helping toensure that children maximize their benefits from education. An interagency part-nership among WHO, UNICEF, UNESCO, and the World Bank supports the devel-opment of a FRESH Start for School Health in Africa and has identified ECD aspart of the overall efforts to promote universal primary education (UPE).

The Prognosis for ECD for the Next 10 Years:Where Is the Cutting Edge?

More African countries are requesting World Bank assistance to develop andimplement ECD programs at a large scale, and the World Bank has initiated dia-logue with a number of countries for lending in this area. To address this growingdemand, the Human Development (HD) Sector of the Africa Region is developinga strategy to increase local capacity and improve the ability of the borrowing coun-tries to design, develop, and implement cost-effective interventions. Tools that areimportant to this strategy include sector analysis, training opportunities, and capac-ity-building initiatives using new information technologies such as the Internet anddistant learning facilities, as well as regional workshops and conferences, to net-work and exchange best practice ideas among African countries. These initiatives,which are supporting the overall development of ECD programs in the region, aredescribed in detail in this publication.

Freestanding ECD projects

ERITREA

Integrated Early Childhood Development Project

To provide health care, nutrition, protection, and cognitive stimulation tochildren under age six, children in primary schools, and orphans

Status ActiveDuration Five years (2000-05)

Borrower Government of the State of Eritrea

Cost US$49.0 millionFunding US$40.0 million IDA Credit

US$4.0 million Government of EritreaUS$5.0 million Italian Cooperation

Target population 560,000 children under the age of six; 32,000orphans; 310,000 primary school children

Partner agencies Ministry of Local Governments, Ministry ofHealth, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Agri-culture, Ministry of Fisheries, Ministry of Laborand Human Welfare, Ministry of Information

World Bank project manager Marito Garcia, Lead Economist (AFTH1)

Despite difficult periods of political instability and struggle for independence,Eritrea has shown a high level of commitment to address the needs of young chil-dren through community initiatives. Because of ongoing border conflicts after inde-pendence, however, public investments in services for children have not reached alevel that could satisfy the increasing demand. Although improvements in healthservices, for example, through immunization campaigns between 1983 and 1995,have helped to decrease the mortality rate of both infants (from 91 to 72 deaths per1,000 live births) and children under age five (from 185 to 136 deaths per 1,000),many other child development indicators show little progress. For instance, 38 per-cent of children less than three years old in Eritrea are still chronically malnour-

9


ished, 44 percent are underweight, many suffer from acute respiratory infections,diarrheal diseases, and malaria, and both food security and health care are inade-quate. As for early childhood education, only 5 percent of children five to six yearsold attend preschools, and performance on standard social indicators is poor. Fromthe 90,000 Eritrean war orphans, so far only 14,000 have been reunited with theirextended families.

In recent years, Eritrea has initiated a number of very effective programs toimprove the well-being and quality of life of children. The most impressive pro-grams, though limited in scope and coverage, are the ECD initiatives of the Ministryof Education and the Orphan Integration Program and group homes of the Ministryof Labor and Human Welfare. The Eritrea Integrated Early Childhood Programaims to expand on these initiatives while addressing other issues related to childrenand their special needs.

The development objective of the program is to promote the healthy growth andholistic development of Eritrean children. The project will increase access to andimprove the quality of services that address young children's care, health, nutrition,social protection, and psychosocial and cognitive developmental needs. The five keyproject components aim at (a) improving child health; (b) improving child andmaternal nutrition; (c) improving early childhood education and care; (d) support-ing children in need of special care and protection; and (e) strengthening projectmanagement, supervision, and strategic communications. The program will reachout to 560,000 children under six years of age, 310,000 primary school-age chil-dren, and 32,000 children who have been orphaned or separated from their fami-lies because of the war.

In the area of health, nutrition, education, and provision of safety nets for chil-dren in need of special protection, the program applies the following strategies:building on existing successful programs and implementation structures; using for-mal as well as nonformal ECD service delivery structures; and strengthening cross-sectoral linkages and coordination. A Central Policy Committee provides advice andguidance on project activities. This committee is chaired by the Ministry of LocalGovernments and includes members from the Ministries of Health, Education,Labor and Human Welfare, Agriculture, Fisheries, Finance, and Information. Inaddition, the program establishes partnerships with communities and other nation-al and private organizations such as the National Union of Eritrean Women and theNational Union of Youth at Asmara University for program planning, implementa-tion, and monitoring.

Freestanding ECD Projects 11

PROPOSED STRATEGY

EARLY CHILDHOOD * Establish 105 preschool resource centers in rural areas.EDUCATION AND CARE * Train and provide support for rural caregivers and preschool teachers.

* Provide learning materials and supplies.* Institute school health and sanitation programs.* Mobilize community support.* Train communities in early childhood education and care techniques.* Build resource centers for early childhood care and education.* Train local officials in the technical supervision and monitoring of

early childhood education and care programs.

CHILD AND MATERNAL * Institute vitamin A and iron supplementation programs.NUTRITION * Provide therapeutic food supplements for a limited period to correct

faltering growth.* Set up a community-based system for monitoring young children's growth.* Educate parents and childcare providers about child nutrition.* Train adults in targeted households in income-generating activities

(linked to the Ministry of Agriculture program supported by other donors).X Promote increased fish consumption (Ministry of Fisheries).* Train ministry officials in the technical supervision and monitoring of

nutrition interventions.

CHILD HEALTH AND * Introduce the Integrated Management of Childhood Illness (IMCI)HYGIENE into health facilities and communities.

* Provide health facilities with essential drugs, medical equipment, andsupplies for child health.

* Protect water quality during use and at the source.- Promote the use and maintenance of safe latrines.* Introduce health interventions into schools.- Improve IEC and communications to promote hygienic behaviors

(such as hand washing) and food safety.. Improve supervision, support, monitoring, evaluation, and research

for child health care services.

CARE FOR ORPHANS * Reunite some 32,000 orphans with their extended families.* Support income-generating schemes for 15,000 foster families

caring for orphans.* Establish 10 community group homes for orphans not reunited with relatives.* Institute program for the adoption of 500 orphans.* Train local staff in IEC/communications and other areas needed

to carry out these activities.* Supervise, monitor, and evaluate child safety net programs

(Ministry of Labor and Human Welfare).


PROJECT MANAGEMENT, * Coordinate ECD activities of different ministries and localSUPERVISION, AND governments.

STRATEGIC * Strengthen capacity within ministries for implementation of ECDCOMMUNICATIONS program.

* Develop and implement a strategy for advocating for ECDinterventions countrywide.

* Support public education campaigns by local authorities, women's andyouth groups, employer and worker groups, schools, health facilities,and agricultural extension to improve awareness of and increase demand forECD services.

EXPECTED BENEFITS

IMPROVED CHILD HEALTH * Reduced childhood morbidity and mortality from five majorchildhood diseases.

* Improved case management, disease prevention skills, and health carepractices of both health personnel and caregivers.

IMPROVED CHILD AND * Increased general understanding of child nutrition and improvedMATERNAL NUTRITION nutritional status for children younger than five years and pregnant

and nursing women.* Reduced incidence of micronutrient deficiency.* Reduced incidence of severe and moderate malnutrition among

children less than six years of age.* Improved overall access to nutritious food.

ENHANCED EARLY * Increased capacity for delivering services to preschool-age children.CHILDHOOD EDUCATION * Increased access to high-quality early education programs.

AND CARE * Effective monitoring to improve early childhood care and education services.* Increased capacity to provide high-quality childcare at the community level.

SUPPORT FOR ORPHANS * Increased capacity of communities to provide care and protection fororphans.

* 32,000 orphans reunited with relatives.* 500 orphans adopted by foster parents.

PROJECT MANAGEMENT, * Increased capacity to manage a multisector program of earlySUPERVISION, AND childhood services.

STRATEGIC * Increased ability to mount multimedia education campaigns to increase publicCOMMUNICATIONS awareness of ECD-related issues.

Source: World Bank, January 10, 2000. Project Information Document, Project Appraisal Document, and Environmental DataSheer for the Eritrea Early Childhood Development Project.

January 2001


KENYA

Early Childhood Development Project

To improve the quality and access to early childhood services in poor neighbor-hoods in order to promote the intellectual, physical, and social development ofKenya's neediest preschool children

Status Active

Duration Five years (1997-2002)

Borrower Republic of Kenya

Cost US$35.1 million

World Bank funding US$27.8 million

Target population 1.2 million poor children ages zero to six years

Partner agencies Ministries of Education, Science and Technology;National Center for Early Childhood Education(NACECE) under the Kenya Institute of Educa-tion (KIE). Five NGOs are implementing pilotcomponents: Action Aid, the Aga Khan Founda-tion/Madrasa Resource Center, the Africa Med-ical and Research Foundation (AMREF), CAREKenya, and Catholic Relief Services Kenya

World Bank project managers Marito Garcia, Lead Economist (AFTH1)James Kamunge, Education Specialist (AFTHI)

Kenya has a history dating back more than three decades of parent-supported EarlyChildhood Centers. For these centers, the Kenya government has been providingteacher training with cost sharing from the trainees. The National Center for EarlyChildhood Education (NACECE), established in 1984 at the Kenya Institute ofEducation (KIE) with the assistance of the Bernard van Leer Foundation, is respon-sible for curriculum development and training of trainers. At the district level, Dis-trict Centers for Early Childhood Education (DICECE) are staffed with a programofficer and trainers who train the ECD teachers.

The Kenya Early Childhood Development Project seeks to improve the quality ofthe ECD centers run by parents and communities. The demand for these centers hasbeen increasing rapidly in recent years. About 20,000 ECD centers existed in themid-1990s. On the basis of 2000 statistics, this number has increased to 26,350 ECDcenters employing more than 40,000 teachers and caregivers. The project seeks toimprove young children's overall physical and intellectual development and specifi-cally aims to (a) improve children's cognitive and psychosocial development; (b)improve children's health and nutritional status; (c) increase the number of childrenof appropriate age who enroll and succeed in school; and (d) decrease the number ofearly primary school students who repeat grades and drop out. These objectives areachieved through two core components: (a) by improving ECD worker's training,performance, and supervision and (b) by community capacity building, mobilization,and parent education. In addition, three pilot components have been implemented to


develop cost-effective, replicable models for financing of ECD services in poor com-munities through providing community grants, raising nutrition and health standardsof preschool students and children ages zero to three, and supporting a smooth tran-sition from preschool to primary school. At the district level, the project is imple-mented through the District Centers for Early Childhood Education (DICECE).

The key components of the project are summarized below.

Improving Teacher Performance. Research has shown that the quality of serviceschildren receive in an institutional setting depends almost entirely on the training ofthe instructor/caregiver and the efficacy of supervision, yet more than 17,000 ofKenya's 27,000 preschool teachers at the start of the project in 1997 had receivedno training in the care and education of young children. Preschool teacher educa-tion is therefore the Kenya Early Childhood Development Project's first priority.

Community Capacity Building for Childcare Services. To increase the rate of enroll-ment in ECD centers and to improve communities' capacity to organize, manage,and monitor ECD services, the project focuses on mobilizing parents and commu-nities. This component, which is coordinated nationally by NACECE with the field-level activities carried out by DICECE, also equips parents and communities withrelevant parenting skills.

Health and Nutrition. A pilot component is delivering basic nutrition and healthservices to children less than one year old and to preschool-age children in some ofthe 14 selected districts. Six of these districts are covered by NGOs with wide inter-national and national experience: AMREF, Catholic Relief Services Kenya, andCARE Kenya. The NGOs also bring additional funding into the project as part oftheir contribution. The other districts identify health and nutrition inputs throughregular government channels for service delivery, and the activities are coordinatedby DICECE, health ministry officials, and grassroots-level functionaries.

Community Support Grants. Similar to the health and nutrition pilot, the Commu-nity Support Grants Pilot component is implemented in 10 districts by NGOs andin 7 districts by the government. They provide grants to communities to supportthem in implementing sustainable ECD interventions. Different NGOs follow dif-ferent approaches, and the final evaluation will look at cost and program effective-ness. This component is closely linked to the community capacity-building activities,which precede the release of grants to the communities.

Transition to Primary School. This component aims to harmonize the curriculumand teaching methods in lower primary school and those of preschool to reducehigh drop-out rates. In selected primary schools (with preschools attached) in pilotdistricts, the components will include special training for primary school and pre-school teachers through the zonal inspectors and DICECE trainers, revision ofschool inspection guidelines, and development of teaching methodologies and cur-riculum for lower primary schools.


Monitoring and Evaluation. An effective monitoring and evaluation system providessupport to monitor project inputs, outputs, and outcomes. The system helps toestablish baseline data and to maintain an information flow from the grassrootslevel for all project components. Project staff are trained in the use of these moni-toring instruments, and it is planned to connect the project districts to the projectoffice through computers for data transmission and feedback.

PROPOSED STRATEGY

TRAINING OF TRAINERS * Develop and discuss ECD guidelines with stakeholders.AND PRESCHOOL * Bridge gap in staffing of DICECE.

TEACHERS * Revise curriculum for teachers and teaching learning support materials.* Provide nine-month induction courses for trainers and two-year

courses to train preschool teachers.* Train 17,000 preschool teachers over the five-year project cycle.* Train DICECE (district) staff in the supervision of ECD centers.* Provide short courses to trainers and ECD teachers.

CAPACITY BUILDING AT * Develop, produce, and disseminate training modules and materials.THE COMMUNITY LEVEL * Train parents and caregivers in child development, health, nutrition,

and sanitation.* Train ECD management committee members in financial management,

community mobilization, leadership, and ECD issues.* Create awareness and sensitize communities.

HEALTH AND NUTRITION * Identify and form ECD center management committees, conductPILOT needs assessment, and train the committees' members.

* Conduct needs assessment of VHCs, location committees,community-level resource persons, mothers, and caregivers.Each group will receive adequate training.

* Identify key messages to address high-priority health and nutritionproblems.

* Develop and adopt IEC materials.* Support community initiatives in improving ECD center facilities.

COMMUNITY SUPPORT * After community sensitization, mobilization, and training,GRANTS PILOT communities in 17 pilot districts will be identified to receive grants

to support ECD activities.* Facilitate identification, planning, and development of IGAs.

TRANSITION PILOT * Produce transition guidelines and materials to support learningand teaching.

* Revise curriculum.* Train preschool and lower primary school teachers, head teachers,

and inspectors on transition issues.


EXPECTED BENEFITS

IMPROVED QUALITY OF * Improved quality of 20,000 ECD centers, benefitingAND ACCESS TO some 1.2 million children.

ECD CENTERS * 5,000 new ECD centers established.* 17,000 preschool teachers trained (85 percent of whom

are women) to manage ECD centers.* 8,000 preschool teachers trained through refresher courses

to improve their teaching methods and skills.* Direct access to ECD services for 200,000 of the poorest

children through community support grants.* Improved health and nutrition outcomes for children.

REDUCED DROP-OUT * Reduction in grade repetition and improvements in completionAND GRADE REPETITION rates in primary schools.

RATES * Increased school participation of young girls who could bereleased from childcare responsibilities.

INCREASED LOCAL * Empowerment of 1,480 communities to implementCAPACITY FOR sustainable ECD interventions.

ECD PROGRAMS * Incremental earnings for trained teachers in the program.* Incremental earnings for mothers as a result of time released

for economic activities.

Source: World Bank, March 1997. Staff Appraisal Report, Kenya Early Childhood Development Project. Contact: WorldBank, Africa Technical Human Development Department, Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Office, Washington, D.C.

February 2001


NIGERIA

Development Communication Pilot Project

To use television and video programs to enhance the intellectual and social devel-opment of preschool-age children

Status CompletedDuration Five years (1993-97)Borrower Federal Republic of NigeriaCost US$10.2 millionWorld Bank funding US$8.03 millionTarget population (Phase I) 4 million Nigerian preschool-age childrenPartner agencies Nigeria Television Authority (NTA)World Bank project manager Eileen Nkwanga, Education Specialist (AFTH3)

This five-year project supports the NTA's plan to enhance the cognitive and socialdevelopment of preschool-age children with a series of educational programs basedon the Sesame Street model and adapted to suit local culture. The project capitalizeson the concept that children learn best while being entertained.

In using the mass media, the pilot project seeks to:

* Reach a large number of young children in poor rural and urban areas, manyof whom are out of reach of educational programs

* Educate parents and other caregivers along with its preschool audience. Train NTA staff in educational programming and increase its capacity and

competence to produce similar programs* Introduce mechanisms for measuring the educational impact of the series.

STRATEGY

PILOT EDUCATIONAL * Support the NTA's production and dissemination of a series ofTELEVISION PROGRAMS Sesame Street-style educational programs.

TO ENHANCE THE * Finance the construction and equipping of a state-of-the-art televisionCOGNITIVE AND SOCIAL studio for the production of the series.

DEVELOPMENT OF * Train and integrate NTA staff into all stages of program developmentPRESCHOOL-AGE and production.

CHILDREN * Identify 10 ECD Centers and preschools across the country to useas pilot sites.

* Finance the production and acquisition of videos and printed support materials.* Finance the distribution of these materials to remote areas

through network transmission, videos-on-wheels, and local video centers.* Finance the production of videos to train mothers and other caregivers about

young children's developmental needs.* Conduct on-the-job training for ECD teachers.* Set up and finance mechanisms to monitor and evaluate the project.


PRODUCED * Production of 130 educational television hours of programming for childrenEDUCATIONAL less than six years old.

MATERIAL WIDELY * Improved communication skills and school preparedness for children lessDISSEMINATED than age six.

THROUGH * Creation of care centers in private preschools and homes in 10 states.THE MASS MEDIA * Greater NTA competence to produce and disseminate children's TV and

distance education programs.* Financial solvency for the NTA through the sale of educational videos,

the training of staff from other TV stations in production of children'sprograms, and the creation and sale of products based on charactersfrom the programs.

* Use of models developed under the pilot program to produce, distribute,and evaluate multimedia educational programs by other countries inthe region.

Source: World Bank, February 1993. Staff Appraisal Report, Federal Republic of Nigeria Development Communication PilotProject. Contact: World Bank, Population and Human Resources Division, West Africa Department, Africa Regional Office,Washington, D.C.

July 1998


UGANDA

Nutrition and Early Childhood Development Project

To raise awareness of famiilies and communities for children's health, nutrition,and psychosocial development

To increase capacity of women and communities to mobilize savings and resourcesfor better care for their children

To reduce moderate and severe malnutrition among children younger than sixyears of age

To increase community resources and abilities to manage and provide high-qualityECD services

Status Active


Borrower Government of Uganda

Cost US$40.0 million


Target population Children less than six years of age and their fami-lies, especially mothers and other caregivers, in100 subcounties spread over 25 of the 40 dis-tricts in the country

Partner agencies Ministry of Health, Ministry of Education andCulture; Ministry of Gender, Labor and Commu-nity Development and its National Council forChildren; Ministry of Agriculture; NGOs at thenational, district, and subcounty level

World Bank project managers Marito Garcia, Lead Economist (AFTH1)Harriet Nannyonjo, Operations Officer (AFMUG)

Uganda has seen rapid economic growth in the last decade, yet many social devel-opment indicators, such as malnutrition among young children, have remained high.The Demographic and Health Survey of 1995 indicated that 38 percent of childrenless than six years of age are stunted. Only a few children, especially in the ruralareas, have access to quality early childhood services. In recent years, the Ugandangovernment has moved gradually to a decentralized administrative structure, allow-ing district and subcounty administrations to play a more active role in the develop-ment process. The lowest level of organization for the purpose of local governance isthe Local Council Level 1 (LC1), also referred to as the community level. LC2(parish), LC3 (subcounty), LC4 (county), and LC5 (district) represent the other lev-els in this decentralized structure. The project covers some 4,250 communities in 100subcounties spread over 25 of the 40 districts in Uganda. These districts were select-ed based on a set of criteria established by the Ugandan government. The criteria


included indicators such as child malnutrition and infant mortality rates at the dis-trict level.

The Uganda Nutrition and Early Childhood Development Project, in Ugandareferred to as the c.h.i.l.d. (Community and Home Initiatives for Long-term Devel-opment) project, seeks to empower the demand side at the interface of service deliv-ery and integrated programs for children ages zero to six to improve their health andnutritional status as well as their psychosocial and cognitive development. A partic-ipatory and process-oriented approach helps communities to assess, analyze, anddecide on actions to be undertaken at the household and community levels to fos-ter the child's appropriate development.

The project consists of three main components: (a) an Integrated CommunityChildcare Package; (b) community support grants and innovations grants for ECDinterventions; and (c) support to national-level ECD programs. The first two com-ponents directly facilitate community-level inputs for improved and expanded pro-vision of services. The third component complements community efforts by sup-porting national-level programs administered by the line ministries. The IntegratedCommunity Childcare Package is geared toward education and training of parentsand caregivers, promotion of growth for young children, and the formation of sav-ings groups and training for income-generating activities. The grants componentprovides financial support to communities that must be matched with a contributionfrom the community of 25 percent of the grant. The contribution can be in the formof cash, in-kind services, or labor to help implement ECD interventions that willhave tangible benefits for children. It is the communities themselves that identify andset priorities for these interventions. The innovations grant mechanism is to be usedfor addressing children in need of special care and protection, for example, orphansor children with disabilities. The third component of the project supports the lineministries in more effective development and implementation of national-level pro-grams. This includes support to the Ministry of Health for training in micronutri-ents; to the Ministry of Gender, Labor and Community Development and theNational Council for Children for advocacy for children's rights; and to the Ministryof Education for the development of an ECD policy, curriculum, and materials.

The project is implemented at the grassroots level by small community-basedorganizations at the subcounty level. These organizations, which are trained, mon-itored, and guided by a district lead NGO, reach out to the communities and facil-itate community planning exercises as well as the training for parents, caregivers,and savings groups. At the national level, the project coordination unit is support-ed by one National Technical Assistance agency for each of the four regions thatprovide technical assistance for training, monitoring, and supervision. At each ofthese levels, the nongovernmental and community-based organizations work inclose coordination with the local government structures and representatives tostrengthen the intersectoral linkages of the program.

Technically, the project is managed by a Project Coordination Office headed bythe Project Coordinator, who reports to the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry ofHealth. A multisector Steering Committee, headed by the Chairman of the Nation-al Council for Children, provides guidance for project planning and implementa-tion. All project activities are supported by a comprehensive communications stra-


tegy that focuses on advocacy and raising of awareness to change common behav-iors that have adverse effects on child development.

The Uganda project is the first ECD project to benefit from a private-public part-nership initiative between the World Bank and Glaxo SmithKline. The objective ofbringing in private-sector experience in social marketing is to maximize the benefitsof strategic communication in social-sector projects. Based on a tripartite memo-randum of understanding among the government of Uganda, Glaxo SmithKline,and the World Bank, Glaxo SmithKline has sponsored a communications advisor tothe project for planning and implementing the project's advocacy and communica-tions strategy. This project element facilitates not only awareness raising but theproduction of training materials and capacity-building efforts among the project'sstakeholders to plan and carry out communications activities effectively.

PROPOSED STRATEGY

INCREASE AWARENESS * Support the Ministry of Gender and Community Development and theOF YOUNG CHILDREN'S National Council for Children in their advocacy efforts to educate the

RIGHTS AND public about children's needs and rights.NEEDS * Increase commitment of district and local governments to address

children's issues and adequately allocate resources for meeting children'sdevelopmental needs.Increase the capacity of NGOs and government representatives to advocatemore effectively for behavioral change.

INCREASE CAPACITY OF * Facilitate community assessment, analysis, and actions for addressingLOCAL COMMUNITIES TO development issues of children in 100 subcounties in 25 selected districts.

IMPLEMENT ECD * Increase communities' abilities to mobilize resources for ECD interventionsINTERVENTIONS by providing grants, training, and technical assistance. These interventions

include setting up semiformal or formal ECD centers, addressing foodsecurity and nutrition, and improving referral services for children.

. Increase access to ECD services by establishing new programs in two-thirds ofall communities in the 25 project districts.

* Provide innovations grants to communities to establish programs for childrenin need of care and protection, such as children affected by HIV/AIDS,orphans, severely malnourished children, and children with disabilities.

* Facilitate provision of integrated services to children through specialactivities such as "child's days" at the parish level.

* Facilitate cross-fertilization of ideas by encouraging communities to learnfrom each other.

INCREASE RESOURCES * Help parents and other caregivers in the household to identify and adoptAND CAPACITIES OF childcare practices that enhance children's cognitive, physical, emotional,

FAMILIES TO and psychosocial development.BETTER CARE FOR * Increase families' financial resources to meet children's developmental needs.THEIR CHILDREN * Help parents and caregivers to monitor and promote the growth of young

children to prevent malnutrition.

SUPPORT NATIONAL * Facilitate the development of an ECD policy, curriculum, and materials.PROGRAMS * Support training for prevention of micronutrient deficiencies.

ADDRESSING CHILDREN


EXPECTED BENEFITS

CHILD HEALTH * A 20 percent reduction in infant mortality rate from the levelof 97 percent at the start of the project.

* A one-third reduction from baseline levels in the prevalence of underweight(% <2 SD weight for age).

ADVOCACYAND * Increased awareness of the needs and rights of children ages zero to six.COMMUNICATIONS

EARLY CHILDHOOD * Increased access to ECD facilities including home-based semiformal orSERVICES formal care and services.

* Improved quality of care and services for children, reflected inimprovements in their physical, psychosocial, and cognitive status.

CAPACITY BUILDING * Increased capacity of some 4,000 communities to plan and implement ECDinterventions at the community level.

- Increased financial resources for childcare at the household and communitylevels through establishment of savings and credit groups in communities.

Source: World Bank, September 30, 1997. Project Implementation Manual, Uganda Nutrition and Early Childhood Develop-ment Project; December 1997. Project Appraisal Document, Proposed Credit for a Nutrition and Early Childhood DevelopmentProject, Republic of Uganda.

February 2001

3ECD Project Components

BURUNDI

ECD in the Social Action Project 11

To improve health, nutrition, and cognitive and psychosocial development of chil-dren under age six in the poorest communities

To build the skills of mothers and community groups to improve the living condi-tions of those children

To incorporate ECD into Community Action Plans for development

To provide nonformal early stimulation programs among the poor

To help young children gain access to essential services in the health and educa-tion sectors

Status Active

Duration 1999-2003

Borrower Republic of Burundi

Total project cost US$13.2 million

ECD component cost US$3.0 million

World Bank funding US$12.0 million (IDA credit)

Target population Children under age six and their mothers fromBurundi's poorest and most vulnerable groups

Partner agencies Ministry of Planning, Development, and Recon-struction, Twitezimbere (local NGO), and Com-mune Development Committees; Ministry ofEducation, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Agri-culture, Ministry of Social Action, Ministry ofCommunity Development, UNICEF, WHO,FAO, UNDP, Action Aid, Oeuvre Humanitairepour la Protection et le Developpement de l'En-fant en Difficulte, University of Burundi

23


World Bank project manager Menahem Prywes, Senior Human ResourcesEconomist (AFTH4)

ECD component manager Susan Opper, Senior Education Specialist(AFTH4)

This is the first ECD program in Sub-Saharan Africa to be incorporated into a SocialFund. The program is distinctive in post-genocide Burundi in that it is a develop-ment program, not an emergency assistance operation. Its primary aim is to providea safety net for young children by strengthening the ability of their families and com-munities to ensure a basic minimum of care. The ECD program is designed to coun-teract the leading causes of illness and death among children ages six years andyounger, to provide nutritious food for children on an ongoing basis, and to respondto children's needs for security, social development, learning, and self-sufficiency.

The ECD activities are integral to the participatory approach of the entire SocialAction Project II, through which Commune Development Committees identify theirhighest priorities for development and reconstruction. This process aims to helppoor communities recover-with a combination of job creation in rural areas,restoration of community infrastructure (schools, health centers, etc.), and provisionof essential social services-while efforts external to this project are made to stabi-lize the macro-economy and reconstruct public-sector delivery systems for urgentlyneeded services. A major objective is improving participation of local populations incollaborative activities through a process of dialogue and mutual learning throughexperience.

The Social Action Project II is part of the Bank's interim support for Burundi dur-ing its progress toward peace. After the military coup in 1996 and the subsequentredirection of government funds to the military budget and suspension of WorldBank and other donor funding, conditions in the country deteriorated sharply.Burundi today is one of the poorest countries in Africa. Poverty is estimated to havedoubled in urban areas and increased by 80 percent in rural areas since the coup.Between 1992-93 and 1996, infant mortality rose from 110 to 136 deaths per 1,000live births, and immunization rates fell from 83 to 54 percent. In children under agefive, severe malnutrition has increased from 6 to 20 percent. Primary school enroll-ments have fallen on average from 70 to 40 percent. In areas most stricken by war,only 9 percent of young children attend primary school. Orphan and internalrefugee problems are acute.

The leading causes of child deaths in Burundi are malaria, acute respiratory infec-tions, diarrhea, and severe malnutrition. The ECD program therefore groups a min-imum package of interventions in the areas of health and nutrition that communescan incorporate into their Action Plans to strengthen households' abilities to preventchildhood illnesses and to strengthen food security. To promote children's psy-chosocial development and acquisition of prenumeracy and preliteracy skills, com-munities are encouraged to set up nonformal, community-managed ECD centers.

The local NGO, Twitezimbere, works with the government to implement theSocial Action Project II. For the ECD program, Twitezimbere contracts and trainsintermediaries (NGOs, consulting companies, individual consultants) to implementthe various components. The process is initiated by multidisciplinary teams created

ECD Project Components

by Twitezimbere to work with the communities to determine their priorities. As aresult of the participatory process, there will he a simple development plan reflect-ing the ranking of ECD subprojects by order of preference. The identified activitiesare prepared for each commune and implemented with support from agents con-tracted by Twvitezimbere. The ECD program trains community mobilizers, healthworkers, educators, and other service providers to back these activities.

The Social Action Project II finances small-scale, low-cost surveys that can berepeated to provide up-to-date follow-up information on the evolution of povertyand are oriented toward action to reduce poverty. They are intended to provideinformation that is necessary for planning reconstruction programs such as condi-tions of roads, water supply, health and education services, and local institutions. Tobe able to track the impact of ECD interventions, the project management willestablish a monitoring and evaluation procedure to focus on the key performanceindicators for ECD: incidence of wasting, stunting, underweight among preschool-age childreni, and quality of child-adult interaction.

PROPOSED STRATEGY

COMMUNITY * Target the poorest communities and those needing to integratePARTICIPATION AND large numbers of refugees.

MANAGEMENT * Improve community participation in the selection, financing, andmanagement of infrastructure subprojects and in delivery of services thatbenefit health, nutrition, and psychosocial and cognitive development ofyoung children.

* Mobilize groups at colline and zonal levels to integrate ECD intothe Coommune Action Plans.

* Starting in four communes, develop a minimum package of ECDinterventions that can be extended to other communes.

* Systematically link program interventions with services in the education,health, and other sectors to encourage sustainability.

* Finance construction of health centers, primary and secondary schools,and rural water supply systems.

* Increase community participation by choosing the infrastructure project andcontributing 10 percent of the costs.

COMMUNITY CAPACITY * Community mobilization and awareness raising for ECD at the collineBUILDING FOR ECD zone and commune levels.

* Organize mothers' groups to maintain essential services for child health,nutrition, psychosocial development, and children's learning.

* Train NGOs as community agents to help implement ECD activities.* Organize capacity-building workshops on ECD for development

partners at the national level and for the communes.

CHILD HEALTH * Focus IEC and preventive illness interventions on the leading causes of childmortality and morbidity.

* Improve comnmunications to promote the use and maintenance of hygienicbehavior and food safety.

* Set up de-worming programs.* Distribute mosquito nets to combat malaria.* Provide low-cost medicines for acute respiratory infection.


CHILD HEALTH * Provide and train in the use of ORT (oral rehydration therapy)(continued) against diarrhea.

* Improve child health care monitoring by mobilizing and trainingwomen's groups.

* Set up community-based mechanisms for monitoring of children's growth.* Recommend action to render effective public health care services for

young children.

CHILD NUTRITION * Strengthen household food security through distribution of seedsfor kitchen gardens.

* Distribute grinding mills for households to make low-cost weaning foods.* Provide micronutrient supplements (vitamin A, iron, iodine) when needed

and where there is no local supply.* Educate parents and childcare providers about child nutrition.

PSYCHOSOCIAL * Assist women's groups to set up nonformal ECD centers at the colline level.DEVELOPMENTAND * Fund training for community-selected caregivers.

LEARNING * Assist communities in creating low-cost learning materials and supplies.* Train local officials and NGOs in the technical supervision of ECD programs.* Promote consistency between nonformal ECD programs and government

policies on preschool education.

CHILDREN IN ESPECIALLY * Identify children who are in need of special care and protectionDIFFICULT CIRCUMSTANCES (orphaned, traumatized, and physically disabled children) and set up an

appropriate referral system.

EXPECTED BENEITS~

COMMUNITY * Increased understanding and awareness of practices for child health,PARTICIPATION nutrition, psychosocial development, and children in difficult circumstances.

* Mobilization of communities for decisionmaking, delivery, and monitoring ofbasic services for young children.

* Increased number of trained ECD workers and caregivers.

CHILD HEALTH AND * Reduced child morbidity and mortality from the major causesNUTRITION of childhood illness in the targeted communes.

* Improved overall access of young children to nutritious food.* Reduced incidence of micronutrient deficiency. Improved nutrition status of young children and their mothers.

PSYCHOSOCIAL * Increased community capacity for encouraging children's cognitiveDEVELOPMENT AND and psychosocial development.

LEARNING * Improved overall conditions for children who are refugees and orphans.* Protection for young children and mothers against poverty through

information and education programs that promote ECD.* Increased social stability deriving from more jobs and

cooperative community efforts.

Source: World Bank, July 7, 1999. Project Appraisal Document, Proposed Credit in the Amount of SDR 9 Million (US$12Million Equivalent) to the Republic of Burundi for the Second Social Action Project. Contact: World Bank, Human Develop-ment 4, Africa Regional Office, Washington, D.C.

September 2000

ECD Project Components 27

CHAD

ECD in the Quality Education Sector Project

To improve the quality of and access to early childhood programs for poor fami-lies promoting the integral development of children three to six years old

To develop local capacity for delivery and management of ECD services

To develop, test, and expand ECD community-based models

To develop a monitoring and evaluation system that will enable expansion of thepilot experience and encouragement of a national ECD policy

Status Project under preparation

Duration 10 years (Phase I: 2001-05, Phase II: 2006-10)

Borrower Government of the Republic of Chad


World Bank funding US$30.0 million (IDA credit)

ECD component cost Phase I: US$1.5 million; Phase II: TBD

Target population Children ages three to six years and their familiesand caregivers

Partner agencies Ministry of Education, Ministry of Health,Ministry of Social Action, UNICEF, EcoleNationale des Agents Sanitaires et Sociaux, NGOs

World Bank project manager Mourad Ezzine, Senior Human ResourcesSpecialist (AFTH2)

ECD component managers Adriana Jaramillo, Education Specialist (AFTH2)Tatiana Romero, ECD Specialist (AFTH2)

The government of Chad is in the process of preparing an education-sector projectto improve access to quality basic education in order to develop human resourcesand to alleviate poverty.

The project has four key components: (a) expand access through a strong supportof community initiatives and school infrastructures; (b) increase equity through tar-geting specific geographic areas and disadvantaged social groups; (c) improve theefficiency of literacy programs; and (d) improve the quality and efficiency of educa-tion through renovating curricula, strengthening initial and continuous training oftrainers, using distance training modules, improving quality and availability of text-books, improving school health, and strengthening initiatives conducive to earlychild development.

The major objective of the ECD intervention in Chad is to better prepare youngchildren for primary school. ECD will have the provision of services that targetyoung children's basic needs: cognitive stimulation, affection and early learning,nutrition, and basic health care. These activities are considered an important initialleg of a child's social and educational development.


COMMUNITY * Set up an ECD network, to support, study, and improve local ECD initiatives.PARTICIPATION AND * Strengthen the ability of Centres d'Education Communautaires (CECR/U) to

MANAGEMENT promote new ECD models.* Develop, test, and disseminate a national ECD program.* Develop a program to educate parents and communities about benefits of

earlyinterventions and alternatives for local ECD activities.

* Develop an ECD training program for community caregivers.* Provide matching innovations grants to build and operate community-based

ECD programs.

COMMUNITY-BASED * Build wellsprings.CHILD HEALTH PROGRAMS * Provide and promote the use and maintenance of safe latrines.

- Provide health facilities with essential drugs, medical equipment, and suppliesfor children's health.

a Develop a preventive and child health service delivery.

CHILD NUTRITION * Set up a community-based growth monitoring system.- Educate parents, communities, and childcare providers about child nutrition.* Provide nutritional support for children attending ECD programs.

PSYCHOSOCIAL * Design and develop an ECD program with the participation of NGOs,DEVELOPMENTAND ministries, and communities.

LEARNING * Train community caregivers in psychosocial development of children.* Train community caregivers in the design and dissemination of learning and

play materials.

MANAGEMENT, * Train local officials and NGOs in the supervision of ECD programs.MONITORING,AND * Establish a protocol clarifying the respective roles of the different line

EVALUATION OF ECD ministries in carrying out a comprehensive ECD program, including activitiesSUBCOMPONENTS that take place at local and community level.

* Strengthen community participation in the selection, co-financing, andmanagement of ECD centers and in the delivery of services that benefitthe integral development of the child.

* Evaluate the pilot ECD intervention for extension to other communities andregions.


EXPECTED BENEFITS

COMMUNITY * Communities mobilized and empowered for decisionmaking and thePARTICIPATION AND delivery and monitoring of basic services for young children.

MANAGEMENT * Increased local capacity of communities to manage ECD programs.

CHILD HEALTH AND * Improved disease prevention skills and health care practices of parents,NUTRITION other caregivers, and ECD workers.

* Promotion of ECD programs and nutrition- and hygiene-related practicesin the communities.

* Increased participation of parents to foster their children's healthyphysical and psychosocial development.

PSYCHOSOCIAL * Increased access to high-quality ECD programs.DEVELOPMENT AND * Improved overall school readiness of young children.

LEARNING * Designed and nationally implemented ECD learning program.* Developed and designed courses for ECD caregivers.

I Increased number of community caregivers trained.

MANAGEMENT, * Increased local capacity to manage integrated and multisector ECDMONITORING,AND programs.

EVALUATION OF ECDSUBCOMPONENT

Source: Document de preparation du Projet d'Appui a l'Enseignement de Base (IDA Vl)-sous composante D&veloppementde la Petite Enfance. Contact: World Bank, Human Development 2, Africa Regional Office, Washington, D.C.

April 2001


GUINEA

ECD in the Basic Education for All Project

To develop an integrated, multisector approach toward child development

To strengthen local capacity for delivery and management of ECD services

To develop, test, and expand ECD community-based models

To develop a monitoring and evaluation system for child development programs

To increase awareness among families of the importance of the early years

Status Project under preparation

Duration 10 years (Phase I: 2001-03, Phase II: 2004-10)

Borrower Government of the Republic of Guinea

Total project cost US$498 million

World Bank funding US$70 million

ECD component cost Phase I: US$2.5 million; Phase II: TBD

Target population 80 percent of all children in the poorest commu-nities between three and seven years of age

Partner agencies Ministry of Basic Education; Ministry of Health;Ministry of Social Affairs

World Bank project manager Robert S. Prouty, Lead Education Specialist(AFTH2)


In Guinea today, there are approximately 1.6 million children under the age of sixyears, representing 22.5 percent of the total population. The latest UNICEF 2000report identified the following indicators: the under age five mortality rate range isat 197, and the infant mortality rate under age one is about 124 per 1,000 livebirths. The total adult literacy rate is 36 percent, malnutrition is 29 percent, andstunting is 12 percent. In Guinea, only one child in five completes primary school;for girls the figure is only one in eight. Primary school repetition rates now average28 percent, and primary school enrollment, 48 percent.

The early childhood intervention in the framework of the Basic Education for AllProject seeks to prepare young children for primary school and to provide servicesthat target young children's basic needs, such as adequate cognitive and emotionalstimulation, nutrition, and basic health care. The intervention will phase its goalsthroughout the 10-year project cycle. During the first three years, a pilot programwill be implemented and tested in three geographical areas and at least three pre-fectures per region, to shape an integrated community-based ECD approach thatcan successfully respond to the different cultural, geographic, institutional, andinfrastructure conditions and needs in Guinea.


During the first three years, a second objective will be to build capacity at the cen-tral level, as well as in each of the prefectures, to prepare for the expansion phase.The second phase will expand the program nationwide, on the basis of lessonslearned during the first three years. The expansion phase is expected to take fouryears. The last phase will focus on increasing quality and consolidating the program.

PROPOSED STRATEGY Phase 1: ECD component

WORKING THROUGH * Identification and selection of community centers based on provenCOMMUNITY-BASED commitment of communities to ECD and functional community organization.

CENTERS v Upgrading of centers depending on needs.* Development of comprehensive training programs for caregivers and

community educators.* Curriculum development for caregivers and community centers.* Development of training programs and training delivery schemes.. Identification of children and families to attend the centers.* Definition of compensation mechanisms for caregivers, leaders, educators,

and the community contributions helping to run the centers.

PARENT EDUCATION * Development of a program of parental education to be delivered viaTHROUGH COMMUNITY community leaders and educators.

LEADERS AND EDUCATORS * Curriculum development for parental education, working with parent groupsand home visiting models to reach out to community members with lessaccess to community centers.

* Identification of community caregivers, leaders, and educators and definitionof training delivery schemes.

* Development of compensatory mechanisms for caregivers, communityeaders, and educators.

MEDIA AND INTERACTIVE * Development of a program and definition of a strategy to deliver anRADIO PROGRAM interactive radio program to educate parents and caregivers.

MONITORING AND * Consolidation of the database for baseline data on children and families.EVALUATION SYSTEM * Training of caregivers, community leaders, and educators on the monitoring

and evaluation system.. Definition of data collection scheme.. Data processing and analysis.

EXPECTED BENEFITS

PROGRAM FOR EDUCATING * Increased number of identified and trained community leaders and educatorsPARENTS AND TRAINING who have acquired care-giving skills and who are able to deliver the parental

CAREGIVERS education program.* Clearly defined incentive schemes for community leaders and educators to

deliver services.* Comprehensive training for implementation teams, at both the national and

the decentralized level (ministries), on the delivery of integrated ECD servicescombining health care, nutrition, and active learning.

CHILD HEALTH * Having a child growth and development monitoring system that will beimplemented at the center level and in each of the prefectures.


EARLY CHILDHOOD * Several initiatives to facilitate smooth transition to primary school forEDUCATION children six to seven years of age such as the expanded "The First Day at

School" initiative, which has been piloted in the School Equity Project, or theuse of national languages, which will be tested in 100 schools.

CAPACITY BUILDING * Increased awareness and capacity among policymakers regarding themanagement,planning, and evaluation of comprehensive ECD programs.

* Improved service delivery structure of integrated ECD services managed bydifferent sectors such as the Ministry of Social Protection, Ministry of Health,and theMinistry of Education, at both the centralized and decentralized levels.

ECD MONITORING * Improved database and collecting mechanism for baseline data on childrenAND EVALUATION and families nationwide.

SYSTEM * Increased capacity of caregivers, community leaders, and educators to handlemonitoring and evaluation systems.

- Establishment of a clear definition of a data collection scheme nationwide.- Improved data processing and analysis.

Source: Document de preparation du Projet Education de Base pour Tous-sous composante Developpement de la PetiteEnfance. Contact: World Bank, Human Development 2, Africa Regional Office, Washington, D.C.

April 2001


LESOTHO

ECD in the Second EducationSector Development Project I

To extend ECD coverage to half of all Basotho children ages three to five byJanuary 2011

To develop and implement a national ECD policy that strengthens links withprimary education

To train teachers and caregivers in ECD practices and techniques

Status Active

Duration Six years (1999-2005)

Borrower Kingdom of Lesotho


ECD project cost US$0.4 million

Funding US$5.7 million governmentUS$21.0 million IDA credit

Target population (Phase I) Children age three to five years, especially thoseliving in poor rural areas

Partner agency Early Childhood Care and Development (ECCD)Unit, Ministry of Education

World Bank project manager Xiaoyan Liang, Education Specialist (AFTH1)

ECD component manager Xiaoyan Liang, Education Specialist (AFTH1)

Lesotho is a small country of 2 million people surrounded by the Republic of SouthAfrica. Its major assets are human capital and water, and many Basothos, especial-ly in rural areas, have long depended on miners' remittances. At one time, moneysent home by laborers abroad accounted for 30 percent of Gross National Product(GNP). The recent decline in demand for outside labor in South Africa has dealt aharsh blow to the economy of its tiny neighbor. Through the Highland Water Pro-ject, however, Lesotho has started harnessing its other major resource-water-forexport to South Africa's densely populated industrial heartland.

Lesotho's mountainous terrain isolates communities and hinders the delivery ofbasic social services, yet in the early 1990s, the country boasted 75 percent net pri-mary school attendance, down to 68 percent in 1996 but still above average for Sub-Saharan Africa. Despite these figures, however, an estimated one-third of the adultpopulation remains illiterate. The Second Education Sector Development Project(ESDP II) is a 12-year program to improve education in Lesotho by focusing on fourmajor areas: ECD, primary and secondary education, technical and vocational edu-cation and training, and nonformal education.

As in many other African countries, the pressures of modern life in Lesotho, com-pounded by high rates of migration, are weakening the extended family and the


traditional system of childcare. The country currently has no formal pre-primaryschool system, and its commitment to improving the existing education systemmakes formal financial commitment to a national ECD program unlikely. All ECDprograms are therefore private or community based.

Since 1985, the Ministry of Education's ECCD Unit has identified its role as a reg-ulator for training and ECD program monitoring. In 1992, Lesotho had some 800childcare centers serving 10,000 children-significantly up from the 4,000 childrenserved by 200 centers in 1985. Yet the quality of these centers varies widely, and theoverwhelming majority of Basotho children, especially in poor rural and mountain-ous areas, have no access to early stimulation programs of any type. Because theECCD Unit is understaffed and lacks the capacity needed to oversee serious expan-sion of coverage and policy reform, one of the project goals is to strengthen the Min-istry of Education's limited capacities and resources to be able to fulfill its commit-ments. In addition, the ministry's role and position regarding the provision of ECCDservices has to be defined clearly. Since the project started, the government of Lesothohas introduced free primary education and has been eliminating fees for StandardOne as of January 2000. Improved quality of pre-primary programs is thereforeneeded to enhance children's school performance and to lower drop-out rates.

PROPOSED STRATEGY

PHASE I (JUNE 1999-DECEMBER 2002)

ECD CURRICULUM 1999TEACHER TRAINING Set up Steering Group on ECD (government staff, ECD providers) to establish

PROGRAM age-appropriate ECD curriculum.

SECTOR POLICY 2000* Establish project staffing levels and complete recruitment.

STRENGTHEN MINISTRY * Complete needs assessment for ECD teachers and trainers.OF EDUCATION'S * Develop ECD teacher training manual.

CAPACITIES * Government to approve policy memo and new ECD curriculum.

2001* Put in place ECD teacher training program.* Initiate advocacy campaign to increase public awareness of the new ECD

curriculum.* Government to approve national ECD policy framework.* Approve action plan for expansion of ECD services to poor communities.* Pilot test low-cost, community-based programs in two of Lesotho's poorest

districts.

2002* Put in place staffing and institutional support for ECD training program.* Analyze results of pilot tests.

PHASE II (JULY 2002-DECEMBER 2006)

IMPROVE ECD SERVICES * Map out a comprehensive program of ECD services with clearly defined rolesAND INCREASE for the government of Lesotho and other providers.

COVERAGE * Disseminate age-appropriate curriculum.* Promote community-based programs.* Strengthen standards of health, safety, and nutrition.


IMPROVE ECD SERVICES * Strengthen the Ministry of Education's role in planning, monitoring,AND INCREASE and regulation.

COVERAGE * Increase coverage to 30 percent of children three to five years old by 2006.(continued)

PHASE III (JULY 2006-DECEMBER 201 1)

* Deliver ECD to half of all children three to five years old.* Integrate children with disabilities into regular ECD centers.* Establish a national system of ECD program monitoring and supervision.

EXPECTED BENEFITS

EARLYCHILD * Increased access to ECD services (to serve at least half of all Basotho childrenDEVELOPMENT three to five years old).

* Increased on-time primary school enrollment and fewer grade repetitions anddrop-outs.

* Increased human capital and reduced poverty.

Source: World Bank, July 7, 1999. Project Appraisal Document, Proposed Credit in the Amount of SDR 15 Million (US$21.0Million Equivalent) to the Kingdom of Lesotho for a Second Education Sector Development Project in Support of the FirstPhase of the Education Sector Program. Contact: World Bank, Human Development 1, Country Department 1, AfricaRegional Office, Washington, D.C.

March 25, 2000


MADAGASCAR

ECD in the Second Community Nutrition Project

To reduce underweight in children less than three years of age

:: t To reduce vitamin A deficiency among children less than three and iron deficiencyanemia among enrolled primary school children

To reduce helminth (parasitic worm) infections among preschool and school-agechildren

Status Active


Borrower Government of Madagascar



ECD component cost TBD

Target population (Phase I) Children less than three years of age, pregnantand lactating women, communities, and parents

Partner agencies (potential) Ministry of Health, Ministry of Education,Ministry of Agriculture, WFP, and UNICEF

World Bank project manager Claudia Rokx, Senior Nutrition Specialist(HDNHE)

ECD component manager Claudia Rokx, Senior Nutrition SpecialistHuman Development Network Education Sector(HDNED)

Poverty became entrenched in Madagascar's social fabric over two decades through1997. Based on estimates from the 1996 Poverty Assessment, around 59 percent ofthe total population can be considered extremely poor, insofar as they consumefewer than 2,100 calories per day. The country is experiencing declines in educationand nutrition, with health indicators slightly better than averages for Sub-SaharanAfrica. In 1992, mortality for children less than five years old was estimated at 166per 1,000 (compared with an average of 181 per 1,000 in Sub-Saharan Africa),maternal mortality at 570 to 660 per 100,000, and life expectancy at 55; 68 percentof the rural population does not have access to potable water, and 65 percent of thepopulation does not have access to latrines.

In the Country Assistance Strategy for Madagascar, priority was given to develop-ment of human capital by improving primary education, basic health care, nutrition,and rural infrastructure. The proposed project will directly support this objective byimproving the nutritional status of the most vulnerable groups, such as children lessthan three years old, children in primary school, and pregnant and lactating women.It will also have a positive impact on children's future productivity and capacity as aresult of interventions during the early years. The project will aim to achieve tangibleand sustainable results in combating malnutrition by improving the capacity of vil-lage communities to address determinants of malnutrition and increasing the quality


and quantity of food intake of children at home. By improving the nutritional statusof children and pregnant and lactating women, the project will improve their qualityof life, decrease child morbidity and mortality rates, and support primary education.

PROPOSED STRATEGY

COMMUNITY * Growth monitoring and promotion for children under three years of age.NUTRITION ACTIVITIES * Food supplementation for malnourished children under three and pregnant

women.* Vitamin A supplementation for children under three and lactating women.* Rehabilitation of severely malnourished children.* IEC and community mobilization.* Support to community-based activities aimed at improving nutrition,

hygiene, and sanitation in villages.* Training of community nutrition workers and social workers.

SCHOOL NUTRITION * Iron/folate supplementation for enrolled primary school children.PROJECT * De-worming of enrolled and nonenrolled children ages 3-14 years.

* IEC as well as nutrition and hygiene promotion in the classroom.* Monitoring of the iodization of salt.* Support to school-based activities aimed at improving nutrition and hygiene

in the school environment.* Training of primary school teachers in nutrition and hygiene.

INTERSECTORAL * Health sector: support the central Ministry of Health to contribute to the costACTIVITIES of the training program on the Integrated Management of Childhood Illness.

* Agriculture sector: support pilot projects aimed at disseminating technicalguidelineson improved diversification and storage of agricultural and food products.

TRAINING AND PROJECT * IEC, training, and management information systems (MIS).MANAGEMENT * Project coordination and management.

EXPECTED BENEFITS

EARLYCHILD * Improved health status of children and pregnant and lactating women as aDEVELOPMENT result of improved nutritional status.

* Higher learning and cognitive and motor development potentials for children.* Improved ability of households to prevent malnutrition.* Increased parental participation in schools.

SOCIAL AND * Community empowerment and improved community organization.ECONOMIC BENEFITS * Increased productivity as a result of decreased mortality and morbidity rates

for children and women and improved cognitive development of children.* Significant savings in public and private health care expenditures as a result

of reduced morbidity and mortality rates among children and women.* Poverty reduction through improved food security and improved access to

water and sanitation facilities at the household and community levels.

Source: World Bank, March 1998. Project Appraisal Document, Proposed Credit in the Amount of SDR 20.4 million to theRepublic of Madagascar for a Community Nutrition II Project.

March 2001


MALI

ECD in the Quality Basic Education Project

To support ECD, in particular children from low-income families, to help themmove into primary education

To strengthen existing preschool programs and to help communities to developinitiatives

To develop an evaluation plan for extending the pilot experience into a nationalECD policy

To strengthen the capacity of NG Os and other private-sector service providers,as well as local communities, to sustain their ECD activities

Status Effective: January 2001Duration 10 years (Phase I: 2001-04, Phase II: 2005-10)Borrower Government of MaliTotal project cost US$541.2 million(first four years)World Bank funding US$45 millionECD component cost US$2.8 million (IDA funding US$1.8 million)Target population Children three to seven years of age in the poor-

est communities of the countryPartner agencies Directorate for Preschool and Special Education

with representatives from the Ministry of Educa-tion, the Ministry of Health, and the Ministry ofSocial Development

World Bank project manager Robert S. Prouty, Lead Education Specialist(AFTH2)


The reforms proposed under the Education Sector Project (PRODEC) are centeredaround linking the communities with the educational system and the schools in par-ticular. The objective of the quality teaching and learning components is to establishan educational system that is designed to meet the needs of the individual learner,helping each child to obtain an education that is relevant to her or his own life andthe community. Hence, each subcomponent of the project is designed to (a) strength-en the linkages between the community and the schools, (b) reduce the drop-out andrepetition rates, and (c) increase students' learning capabilities. A particular empha-sis is placed on improved learning in the rural areas and for girls.

ECD activities will be designed to increase the percentage of children entering andcompleting primary school. They should also support communities in developinginitiatives such as working with women's groups and teachers to better support theindividual learning process and to be responsive to the nutritional and health needs


of young children. Communities will work collaboratively to ensure high-qualityday-care services. Providing care for young children is currently left disproportion-ately to women and young girls, many of whom cannot go to school because theyare expected to take care of their younger siblings. The impact of HIV/AIDS on pre-school-age children, either AIDS orphans or young children who themselves areHIV positive, will be the focus of a major study related to the project.

An integrated ECD approach will be developed emphasizing nutrition, health,cognitive and psychosocial development, and family literacy.

PROPOSED STRATEGY

PHASE 1: * Consolidate, upgrade, and improve the quality of 250 existing ECD centers.EARLY CHILD * Develop programs and teachers' guides to facilitate the transition of children

DEVELOPMENT into primary education.- Provide low-cost materials to ECD centers and support communities to

improve the management of these centers.a Open 180 new ECD centers with new models and materials tested by

communities to establish policies and standards and to create IEC programsat the central level.

- Strengthen the ability of NGOs and private-sector service organizations at thedecentralized level to work with communities on ECD issues.

PHASE II: * Take successful and promising community-based ECD initiatives from Phase ITAKING PROGRAMS to scale in collaboration with stakeholders. Strengthen links between ECD

TO SCALE programs and local governments as part of the government's effort to reachUniversal Primary Education in Phase III.

PHASE III: * Strengthen the sustainability and support the replicability of ECD programs.SUSTAINABILITY AND Because education-sector management would be decentralized, particular

REPLICABILITY OF focus will be given to the quality control role of the Centres d'AnimationPROGRAMS P&iagogique (CAPs) and to ensuring that ECD activities become an integral

part of the transition to primary education.

EXPECTED BENEFITS

EARLY CHILD * Have a manual of procedures for an integrated ECD model developed, tested,DEVELOPMENT and evaluated in Phase I and implemented in Phase II.

PROGRAM MODEL, * Have communities recruit 300 ECD monitors, who will have been trained byTRAINING,CURRICULUM the preschool training center.

* Have an ECD curriculum developed and implemented.* Have a trained group of 550 education-sector personnel (at central ministry

level, regional directors, CAP directors, inspectors, and ECD center directors)who will be able to develop and evaluate ECD programs.

* Provide practical training in ECD to 250 Koranic school teachers and 25women's groups (about 250 women). The work with women's groups willinclude sensitization to female genital circumcision issues.

Source: Document du Programme d'Investissement Sectoriel de l'Education, sous composante Developpement de la PetiteEnfance. Contact: World Bank, Human Development 2, Africa Regional Office, Washington, D.C.

April 2001


MAURITANIA

ECD in the 10-Year Education Sector Reform Program

To support community initiatives to develop early childhood programs

To develop and implement a training program for different actors in ECD

To strengthen the ECD resource centers

To support development of institutional capacity to manage ECD programs

Status Project under preparationDuration 10 years (Phase I: 2001-03, Phase II: 2004-10)Borrower Government of the Republic of MauritaniaTotal project cost US$188 million(first four years)World Bank funding US$50 millionECD component cost Phase I: US$1.97 million; Phase II: TBDTarget population Children ages three to six years, their families,

and caregiversPartner agencies Ministry of Education, Ministry of Health,

Secretariat d'Etat a la Condition Feminine(Direction de la Famille et de l'Enfance),UNICEF, World Vision, NGOs

World Bank project manager Mourad Ezzine, Senior Human ResourcesSpecialist (AFTH2)


The population in Mauritania today is approximately 2.5 million. Children belowseven years of age represent more than 20 percent of the population; more than330,000 children are between three and six years old.

Mauritania has a great need for childcare for young children because numerousmothers-many of whom are heads of households (37 percent compared with anAfrican average of 22 percent)-are responsible for securing the survival of theirfamily. To generate some form of income, children are left behind, often underunsafe and inappropriate conditions. The harmful effects of drought force a consid-erable number of mothers to leave their homes to look for work.

The increase in the number of private and community childcare centers in recentyears clearly is a response to the family's needs for childcare. However, most of thesechildcare facilities and centers do not provide appropriate care that would enhancethe integral development of the child. The primary focus of the ECD componentunder the 10-year education reform process is therefore to strengthen the capacitiesand resources of communities to develop different models and options for childcareservices and to implement an integrated approach to ECD.


PROPOSED STRATEGY

COMMUNITY INITIATIVES * Prepare, validate, and implement a stimulating early childhood programbuilding on existing community structures.

* Supplement and improve the equipment (didactic material, medical supply) ofcommunity day-care centers that form part of an existing countrywide net-work.

* Create a support system at community level, and identify criteria for accessingthis support, to promote income-generating activities and the improvement ofcommunity infrastructures and nutrition benefiting young children.

* Develop a communications strategy to increase awareness of the differentactors in ECD (local authorities, politicians, parents, caregivers, and civilsociety).

TRAINING * Establish an intersectoral committee to prepare and monitor the trainingstrategy and system functioning.

- Prepare training modules to assist trainers, community educators, programsupervisors, caregivers, and heads of childcare centers in implementing achild-centered approach.

* Prepare an ECD training module for primary school teachers in training atENI (Ecole Normale d'Instituteurs).

* Implement different training activities at different levels.* Ensure access to literacy programs for community educators in coordination

with the literacy component of the project.* Implement a monitoring and evaluation system for the training component.

RESOURCE CENTERS * Create and support operation of 10 ECD resource centers.FOR ECD * Provide technical support for the preparation and implementation of

programs and action plans of the ECD network.* Monitor and evaluate the activities of the resource centers.

INSTITUTIONAL * Elaborate a work program for institutions in charge of ECD.CAPACITY BUILDING * Provide in-service training in programming, planning, and information

technology for national-level managers.* Strengthen the institutional and logistical framework for ECD.* Create a database and documentation on the situation of young children and

the service delivery infrastructure.

EXPECTED BENEFITS

COMMUNITY * Increase community capacities, both qualitative and quantitative, forPARTICIPATION AND implementing and managing ECD programs and childcare centers.

MANAGEMENT CAPACITIES

ECD TRAINING SYSTEM * Have a comprehensive training system and program developed and validatedto train ECD caregivers and program managers.

ECD RESOURCE CENTERS * Achieve national coverage of ECD resource centers at the regional level thatwill support community structures and the development of networks for ECDpractitioners.


INSTITUTIONAL CAPACITY * Create a legal and institutional framework to support early childhoodFOR PROGRAM programs and policies.MANAGEMENT * Have a national core team trained in the planning, management, information

systems, communication, and documentation to support ECD programs.

Source: Preparation document of the Early Childhood Development Component-Mauritania. Contact: World Bank, HumanDevelopment 2, Africa Regional Office, Washington, D.C.

April 2001


RWANDA

ECD in the Human Resource Development Project

To develop a national ECCD policy and strategy 4

To increase access to and quality of pre-primary education nationwide

To build capacity for ECCD on the national, prefecture, and local levels

To identify cost-effective and nonformal ways to support child development at thecommunity level

Status Effective: January 2001


Borrower RwandaTotal project cost US$37 million (IDA: US$35 million)

World Bank funding TBD

ECD project cost US$630,000Target population (Phase I) Children younger than seven years of age,

caregivers, communities, and preschool teachers

Partner agencies Ministry of Education, Ministry of Local Gov-ernment, UNESCO, UNICEF, NGOs

World Bank project manager Susan Opper, Senior Education Specialist(AFTH4)

ECD component manager Kristine Hauge Storholt, Consultant (AFTH4)

In the aftermath of a bloody civil war, Rwanda's people-most especially its 1.9 mil-lion children under the age of five-suffer disproportionately from a host of social ills:

Social Indicator Percentage of the Population

Children under age SMalnutrition 29.0Protein-energy malnutrition (PEM) 26.2Wasting (weight relative to height) 27.3Stunting (low height for age, all children 0-5) 41.8Stunting (low height for age, 3-4 year-olds) 52.1Anemia 43.1Lack of micronutrients (3-4 year-olds) 30-32Respiratory infections 33Diarrhea during past 2 weeks 25

Older childrenPrimary school completion rate 22-30


Parental factors

Illiteracy for women* 52

Consult health service when child is sick <33

HIV prevalence in mothers and pregnant women 7.5 (rural),

19 (urban)

Environmental factors

No running water in the house 98

Fertility rate 6-8 children

per womanOrphans 400,000-500,000

(from war and AIDS)

*Child mortality rates are double where the mother is uneducated.

Sources: Demographic Survey 1992 (National Office of Population, Macro International); NationalNutrition Survey of Women and Children in Rwanda 1996 (UNICEF, WHO).

In the aftermath of the genocide in 1994, the loss of human resources has had amarked impact on the entire education sector, including preschools. Moreover, withan average of six to eight children per woman, the preschool-age population isexpected to double by 2022, putting even greater strain on the social service andeducation systems.

Rwanda now has approximately 250 early childhood education programs pri-vately run by churches and parent associations, serving some 15,000 children underthe names of ecoles maternelles, nursery schools, and preschools. Most are located

in urban areas. However, only 1.5 percent of eligible preschool-age children areenrolled. The Ministry of Education seeks to increase access to and to improve thequality of pre-primary education as an integral part of the entire education system.To improve school readiness, ECCD programs have therefore become a national pri-ority.

Significant accomplishments have been achieved for the support of the educa-tional development of young children through the creation of the Division ofPreschool Education in the Rwandan Ministry of Education and an ExperimentalResource Center for Preschool Activities (CEAPS). These are the two public institu-tions responsible for setting national standards, training teachers, adapting teachingmaterials, and promoting enrollment. The government is identifying a frameworkfor the educational development of its youngest citizens through which a low-cost,community-based approach will be pursued to build and support local capacitiesand to create ownership of ECCD programs.

Policy development and capacity building are the main objectives for ECCD inthe Human Resource Development Project. The project will integrate pre-primarycare and education into the overall framework of the education sector with the aimof reaching Universal Primary Education by 2010. It will develop a strong supportsystem for local ECCD initiatives and consequently increase access to quality ECCDservices. The National Policy and Strategy will provide the foundation upon whichECCD will be supported in the long term.


The specific goals of the ECCD component are to work in partnership withstakeholders, to educate caregivers, and to build capacities in a way that will allowcommunities to create their own ECCD support systems. The project will thusimprove access and quality of early childhood education under a flexible anddemand-driven approach.

The development of a national policy and strategy for ECCD will focus on defin-ing appropriate roles for the Ministry of Education and other ECCD serviceproviders. It will provide national guidelines for supporting local initiatives, teachertraining, training of trainers, development of an age-appropriate curriculum, andthe management of ECCD generally. The policy process will be participatory andwill include studies of rural and urban ECCD practices, as well as requirements forsustainability and identification of capacity-building needs on the local level. A pol-icy workshop held in November 2000 brought together actors of child supportthroughout the country for consultation and launching of an action plan.

Strengthening of the capacities for ECCD is expected on the local level (includ-ing the education of caregivers) as well as at the central level (Division of Preschooland the Experimental Resource Center for Preschool Activities). Service deliverywill be driven by private and local initiatives, supported by the Ministry of Educa-tion. The outcome of the policy process will guide the expansion of ECCD centersand determine the specific goals and implementation plan for activities for the lastthree to four years of the project. Support for pre-primary education will seek cost-effective, community-based, and nonformal solutions. Beneficiaries targeted willmainly be children ages zero to seven years, caregivers, and communities.

PROPOSED STRATEGY

DEVELOP A NATIONAL * Undertake background studies on rural and urban ECCD practices andPOLICY AND STRATEGY needs, including psychosocial dimensions.

FOR ECCD * Organize a policy development workshop for actors in child support inRwanda to guide the formulation of a national policy on ECCD. Thisincludes defining alternatives for sustainable, community-based, integratedpreschool programs and launching an action plan.

* Define the roles of the government, the private sector, and the communitiesin ECCD.

* Establish guidelines and standards for public and private ECCD initiatives.* Widen the consultations with other ministries and organizations involved in

child development.* Organize visits and comparative studies to other countries in Africa as part

of the policy process to study different models of ECCD programs.* Hold a follow-up conference to review and adopt the National Policy and

Strategy for ECCD.

IMPROVETHE QUALITY * Sensitize policymakers and teachers.OF PRESCHOOL * Train preschool teachers and ECCD caregivers.

EDUCATION * Introduce training of teachers and trainers as an integral part of the nationalteacher training program.

* Develop, distribute, and implement a national ECCD curriculum.* Establish performance indicators for program monitoring and evaluation.


STRENGTHEN * Build capacity for coordination and management of national preschoolINSTITUTIONAL programs.

CAPACITY * Strengthen the ability of the Experimental Resource Center for PreschoolActivities to promote new ECCD models, train teachers (in-service andpre-service), and design and disseminate didactic material.

* Educate parents and communities about the benefits of early interventionsand alternatives for local ECCD activities.

* Support community-based initiatives.

EXPECTED BENEFITS

ACCESS AND SCHOOL * Increased access to high-quality ECCD services.READINESS * Improved readiness for primary school entry at an appropriate age.

* Fewer grade repetitions and drop-outs in primary school.* Increased number of qualified preschool teachers.

Source: World Bank. Project Appraisal Document and Technical Note, Early Childhood Development and Education (ECCD)in the Human Resources Development Project-Rwanda, Appraisal Working Paper, April 2000. Contact: World Bank, HumanDevelopment 4, Africa Regional Office, Washington, D.C.

April 2001


SENEGAL

ECD in the Quality Education for All Project

To increase access of children three to five years old to ECD services using a low-cost, high-quality, and community-based model

To train caregivers in community-based ECD centers

To develop and implement a national ECD policy that strengthens links with thegovernment's Poverty Reduction Strategy

Status Active

Duration 10 years (Phase 1: 2000-03)

Borrower Government of the Republic of Senegal

Total project cost US$250 million

World Bank (IDA) funding US$50 million(Phase I)ECD project cost (Phase I) US$1 million

Target population (Phase I) Children ages three to five years and theircaregivers, especially in poor rural areas

Partner agencies Ministry of ECD; Ministry of Education; Min-istry of Health; Ministry of Family, Social Action,and National Solidarity; Ministry of Planning;Agence d'Execution des Travaux d'Interet Public(AGETIP); NGOs

World Bank project manager Linda English, Senior Operations Officer(AFTH2)

ECD component manager Susan Opper, Senior Education Specialist(AFTH4)

The objective of the Quality Education for All Project (QEFA) is to establish theframework and strategies for universal primary education. It involves actions at alllevels of the education system, from preschool to university, as well as adult litera-cy. The project will put in place sustainable approaches to increase access to learn-ing for all Senegalese children, including those from the most vulnerable groups andunderserved regions. A basic tenet is that ECD interventions increase the percentageof children entering primary school at the appropriate age and their subsequent per-sistence in schooling. Children in particularly vulnerable circumstances, includinggirls, benefit disproportionately from such interventions.

There are three complementary perspectives in the operational strategy of theQEFA: (a) helping the system build more schools and hire more teachers; (b)improving quality in such a way that student learning increases; and (c) improvingoverall system management, in part through decentralizing responsibilities andauthority for service delivery. Management skills of local education officials and


communities will be upgraded as part of the effort to bring education closer to par-ents and the community. The first phase of the project (2000-03) is designed to putthe framework and strategies for the QEFA solidly in place.

In this context, the ECD program is designed to make it feasible for the govern-ment to achieve its policy of widespread access to preschool by developing a low-cost model that is based on local community initiative in partnership with govern-ment and NGO services, and implemented through a contracting approach. Phase Ioperations begin in 5 of the country's 10 regions. The program will start with com-munities that are already organized to participate in literacy, community nutrition,and other development projects. As the program gradually extends coverage to all10 regions, the priorities will be to maximize potential synergies and lessons learned,and to coordinate with ongoing and new development projects that can help takeECD to scale. The aim is to link up with additional sources of funding also externalto the QEFA (e.g., the Social Investment Fund Project) in order for communities tosustain their ECD interventions.

During Phase I of the ECD program, support will be provided to develop modelsand materials for low-cost activities and programs at the community level. An inte-grated approach will be developed to include nutrition, health, cognitive, and psy-chosocial development, as well as family literacy strategies emphasizing the transi-tion to primary schooling. Support at the central level focuses on establishing poli-cy, norms, training packages, and IEC. At the decentralized level, support is givento capacity building for the preschool inspectorate, NGOs, and other private-sectorservice providers that will provide technical assistance to community-driven ECD.The national system of preschool inspectors has a key role in providing the trainingcurricula that will be used to instruct the community-selected mothers, grandmoth-ers, and other caregivers in the basics of ECD, for stimulating children's learningand social development.

During Phase II, promising ECD initiatives will be taken to scale through collab-oration with a wide range of actors and development programs. In addition, link-ages between community-based ECD and early primary schooling will be strength-ened as part of the government's program to reach universal coverage of the firsttwo years of primary schooling during this phase. Phase III activities will focus onstrengthening the sustainability and replicability of ECD approaches under increas-ingly decentralized management of the education sector. Emphasis on quality con-trol and on ensuring that ECD activities become an integral part of the transition toschooling will be reinforced.


PROPOSED STRATEGY Phase 1: ECD component

ECD PROGRAM * Set up a protocol clarifying the respective roles of the Ministry Delegated forMANAGEMENT AND Basic Education and National Languages, and other ministries, in carryingCAPACITY BUILDING out acomprehensive ECD program, including activities that take place at the

community level.* Approve an Action Plan for expansion of ECD services managed by

communities.* Establish quality norms and training packages.* Develop guidelines for the contracting mechanisms to be used between

government, communities, and private-sector agents.* Set up IEC programs about ECD, with an emphasis on reaching vulnerable

groups.* Train and strengthen national- and decentralized-level staff in the Ministry of

Education for ECD program management, MIS, evaluation, and supervision.* Train and build capacity of national NGOs and other private-sector service

providers to help implement community-based ECD programs.

COMMUNITY * Initiate advocacy campaign to increase public awareness of the new ECDMOBILIZATION FOR program.INCREASED ACCESS * Inform and mobilize communities to participate in the program.

* Provide seed money for start-up at the community level (e.g., modestassistance for repairing community-supplied premises for ECD).Encourage communities to match program support with local goods andservices(i.e., communities to select and remunerate ECD caregivers).

* Set up 180 parent- or community-run ECD centers capable of serving asmodels for similar programs nationwide.

CURRICULUM * Fund workshops to design age-appropriate curriculum to produce supportDEVELOPMENT AND materials (e.g., instructional toys made from low-cost, locally available

TRAINING OF materials).CAREGIVERS * Disseminate the curriculum.

* Design courses to train community-based caregivers.* Fund training activities for some 540 community-based caregivers.

HEALTH AND NUTRITION * Create guidelines for a minimum package of health and nutrition activities toPROGRAMS be incorporated into the program at each ECD site.

* Identify NGOs and other service providers to help communities procuregoods and implement the minimum health package.

* Strengthen standards of health, safety, and nutrition at the ECD sites


EXPECTED BENEFITS

CAPACITY OF * Increased capacity to manage multisector programs of early education services onCOMMUNITIES FOR a national scale at the national and community levels.

PROGRAM MANAGEMENT * Effective monitoring to improve early care and education services.AND PLANNING * Increased ability to mount multimedia campaigns to broaden popular awareness

of ECD issues.

EARLY CHILDHOOD * Increased access to high-quality early education.EDUCATION AND CARE * Increased supply of nonformal ECD facilities.

* Increased share of children three to five years old participating in ECDservices.

* Increased primary school enrollment rates of children in the program areas.* Enhanced intellectual and social development for young children.

CHILD HEALTH AND * Improved disease prevention skills and health care practices of parents,NUTRITION caregivers, and ECD workers.

- Increased general understanding of child nutrition.* Improved access to nutritious food.

Source: Document d'evaluation du Projet Education de Qualite pour Tous (EQPT) en appui au Programme Decennal deV'Education et de la Formation (PDEF) que 1'Association Internationale de Developpement se propose de financer par l'octroiaj la Rpublique du Senegal. 16 f6vrier 2000; and internal ECD program planning documents.

February 2000

Sector and Strategy Work

The Africa Regional ECD Initiative 1996-98

The Africa Region's present commitment to support ECD programs has its genesisin two parallel actions. One was the operations work in Kenya and Nigeria, report-ed in Section II of this volume. The second was an Africa Regional ECD Initiativelaunched in 1996 by the former technical unit (AFTH) of the Region.

The objectives of this Regional Initiative were:

l To acquire better understanding of the emerging needs for ECD services in thecontext of the changing conditions of African mothers and children

- To develop an indigenous research base and capacity in the areas of care giv-ing and ECD

- To influence and support country and donor policy, financing structures, pro-gramming, and implementation for integrated services of health, nutrition,early education, and wider family and community support services.

The first objective was achieved through a series of desk reviews complemented byindividual country case studies. Results of the regional sector work were summa-rized in the two publications, The Condition of Young Children in Sub-SaharanAfrica (Colletta, Balachander, and Liang 1996) and Review of Early ChildhoodPolicies and Programs in Sub-Saharan Africa (Colletta and Reinhold 1997). Thefirst title analyzed the condition of young children in Africa and pointed to the ben-efits of ECD in increased efficiency of primary and secondary school investments,children's enhanced economic contribution to society, and the reduction of socialinequity. The second publication presented a series of case studies and good practiceexamples of ECD programs in Africa initiated and implemented by internationalnongovernmental ECD and national governmental agencies.

The country case studies focused on Kenya, Mauritius, and South Africa. Thesecountries were given active policy and program support to ECD and were widelyconsidered to illustrate good practice upon which other countries could draw. Thepolicy work for Mauritius is reported in this section. The study on South Africa wasundertaken by the Early Learning Resource Unit, an associate member of the SouthAfrican Congress for Early Childhood, and it directly contributed to the formula-tion of a new policy in the sector (Biersteker 1997). The Kenya case studies com- 51


prised the economic and sector work (ESW) for project preparation of the WorldBank co-financed Kenya ECD project also described in this volume.

Focusing on capacity building for the sector, the Bank's Africa Regional ECD Ini-tiative, in collaboration with the Bank's Human Development Network, EducationSector (HDNED) and the World Bank Institute, instigated work on two projects: (a)a CD-ROM for ECD to offer access to wide-ranging materials that would includeinternational references, latest research, and experience from a broad array of coun-tries as well as substantial detail on program development experience on a step-by-step basis; and (b) an African Regional chapter of the World Bank's ECD web site,which evolved into the IMPACT project reported in Section V of this publication.The Regional Initiative brought in international expertise and worked through theAfrica Region's ECD Affinity Group in collaboration with HDNED to develop indi-cators for operations impact assessment of ECD programs that follow an integrat-ed approach of early education, health, and nutrition.

The ECD Initiative supported government and development partner investmentsin ECD by working with World Bank task managers and forging partnerships withdifferent organizations and professionals worldwide who had particular strengths inECD. These included UNICEF, the Aga Khan Foundation, Bernard van Leer Foun-dation, Save the Children U.S., U.S. Agency for International Development(USAID), the Consultative Group for Early Childhood Care and Development,African researchers, educators, NGOs, women's groups, and government ministries.Joining forces with UNICEF, the Aga Khan Foundation, and the Association for theDevelopment of Education in Africa (ADEA), the Initiative helped create, in 1997,an ECD Working Group for the ADEA.

In 1998, the ECD Initiative, initially launched by Nat Colletta (Manager, Post-Conflict Unit [SDVPC]) and managed by Susan Opper (Senior Education Specialist,AFTH4) with the support of a Swiss trust fund, was folded into the operations workof the Human Development Network of the Africa Region (AFTHD) when theAfrica Region's ECD Team was created.

Sector and Strategy Work 53

Country-Level Sector Work

CAPE VERDE AND GUINEA

"Early Childhood Development in Africa:Can We Do More and Better for Less? A Look at the Impactand Implications of Preschools in Cape Verde and Guinea"

Task manager: Adriana Jaramillo, Education Specialist (AFTH2)

Principal researchers: Karen Tiejen and Bruno Suchaut, Ph.D.

It is now widely recognized that early intervention programs are one of the mosteffective ways to build human capital and break the cycle of poverty. Yet the amountspent on early childhood care and education (ECCE) varies considerably, and nosingle approach has been identified as a universal model to suit every cultural con-text. If poor countries are to initiate and maintain effective ECCE programs, it isnecessary to identify interventions that are both cost effective and adaptable to meetdifferent communities' and countries' needs.

As part of the World Bank's effort to amass the "building blocks" needed to deter-mine both the feasibility of and best practices for investing in early childhood careand development, the sector study examines early childhood programs in a relative-ly wealthy African country-Cape Verde-in comparison with a relatively poorcountry-Guinea. Based on the understanding that there is no blueprint for theimplementation and support of early childhood activities, particularly in low-incomeAfrican countries, it emphasizes that the feasibility of different approaches may beto a large extent country specific. In Cape Verde, the sector work is being conduct-ed under the Education and Training Consolidation and Modernization Project. InGuinea, this sector work will support the government's Education for All plan toimprove learning quality, eradicate child illiteracy, and reduce adult illiteracy.

Indicator Guinea Cape Verde

Per capita GNP (US$) 550 960Under age 5 mortality (per 1,000) 207 64

Malnutrition 29% 19%Imnmunized for measles 56% 82%Pre-primary school enrollment 9% 30%Grade 1 enrollment 54% 100%

Source: World Bank 1999.

The study attempts to extract general guidelines on implications for adaptation andimplementation of different program options to inform educational planningefforts. Reviewing the country context, it describes the range of early childhoodprograms in operation and explores the impact of these programs on children'scognitive and physical development, identifying for both countries the characteris-tics of the most effective interventions.


The study addresses five main research questions:

1. What is the overall status and profile of preschool or ECD programs in the tar-geted countries?

2. What factors determine child enrollment in preschool or ECCD programs?

3. To what extent does preschool attendance influence child development?

4. What programs or program characteristics appear to be most effective in termsof child development? (What types or characteristics of the surveyed preschoolprograms are most associated with or explain child development gains?)

5. What are the policy implications of these programs in terms of beneficiaries,costs, financing, and implementation?

Section II of the study summarizes the concept of ECCD and its relevance for pover-ty alleviation in the African context. Section III describes the methodology used forthe study. Sections IV, V, VI, and VII examine the findings and policy implicationsfrom the Cape Verde and Guinea surveys, including a description of the ECCD sec-tor and an analysis of the determinants of preschool attendance and impact on childdevelopment. Section VIII concludes with a summary of findings and principal pol-icy implications of the research, identifies additional issues, and makes recommen-dations for future action.

The study applies a survey methodology defining cognitive and physical develop-ment as dependent variables, and individual characteristics of the children (such asage, gender, health status, socioeconomic status, and family characteristics) andvariables related to the preschool/ECCD programs (such as student/teacher ratio,qualification of teachers, type of program, urban or rural settings, private or publicprogram, overall cost structure) as the two groups of independent variables. A sam-ple of preschool centers was designed in each of the countries, taking into accountvariability of socioeconomic levels, geographic distribution, and types of programs.In both Guinea and Cape Verde, for each of the centers surveyed, a random sampleof 15 five-year-old children and their families were surveyed, and for each center, 10five-year-old children from the same location and with similar socioeconomic char-acteristics who did not attend preschool formed the control group. Cross-tabs andmultivariate analysis were used to compare the two groups and the incidence ofvariables for the cognitive and physical development of children. These analyseswere done separately for each country. Two types of instruments were applied: ques-tionnaires addressed to the teachers and personnel in the centers and to families, andcognitive development tests to assess the children and the program's impact.

In Guinea, the sample was designed in a two-phase approach: a sample of 36 pre-school centers and 900 children from Conakry and four additional geographicregions (Moyenne Guinee, Haute Guin6e, Basse Guin6e, Guinee Forestiere). Thesamples were derived from a first-stage sample of 460 centers and 1,089 teachers.Of the 36 preschool centers, 64 percent were ecoles maternelles, 22 percent wereCommunity Education Centers (CECs), and 14 percent were jardins d'enfants. InCape Verde, the sample consisted of 34 centers and 850 children and their familieswith a geographic distribution covering five islands (Santiago, 60 percent; Maio,Fogo, Sal, and Sao Nicolau). Sixty percent of the centers were located in either


urban or semi-urban areas, and 40 percent were in rural areas. The distributionaccording to the type of centers was the following: public, 50 percent; private, 18percent; NGO, 11 percent; community, 12 percent; religious, 9 percent.

Study Findings and Recommendations

Preschool education can be a double-edged sword that can both alleviate and exac-erbate disparities. Preschool services can have an equalizing effect on the cognitivedevelopment of poor children, compensating for disadvantaged socioeconomicbackgrounds. Even if preschools cannot entirely close the cognitive developmentgap between rich and poor children, a lack of early stimulation programs can widenthe gap in a relatively well-off country. Public policy should emphasize the supportof ECCD programs for poor and disadvantaged children. The provision of subsi-dized programs for lower-income families could, in addition to reducing disparitiesin school readiness among children from different socioeconomic status (SES) lev-els, also free mothers to find employment, thus improving household income levels.

More and better can be done with less. High-cost programs may not necessarily pro-duce the best results. Low-cost preschools need not sacrifice quality. Many suchpreschools are effective, producing high cognitive development scores at low unitcosts. Traditional, government-supported approaches with highly paid teachers andformal training do not automatically guarantee high cognitive development scores.Short, focused, reliable, and contextualized training can be more efficient and lesscostly than most available formal training programs. Community-based programs,such as the CECs in Guinea, appear promising, in part because of parental involve-ment and financing and the proximity of the locally resident teacher, who is able tospend more time at the school. The wide variation in effectiveness of preschools, atmany different price points, indicates that there are many factors that influence apreschool's success. Closer examination of what makes indigenous models of ECCDsuccessful is warranted, particularly in the case of the CEC programs in Guinea butalso in other francophone African countries that have similar types of initiatives.

Government plays a critical role in supporting ECCD programs. The services thegovernment provides and the policies it promulgates should work within a realisticinvestment framework. In Guinea, where preschool enrollment is low and publicresources for providing ECCD programs are scant, the government can establish asupportive policy framework that creates an environment in which private-sectorand community ECCD initiatives can flourish. This could take many differentforms, such as (a) supporting IEC and parental education campaigns about theimportance of early childhood education and care; (b) piloting low-cost, communi-ty-supported ECCD models based on promising indigenous programs; (c) creatingECCD start-up credit funds; or (d) developing nonburdensome guidelines and guid-ance for community programs.

Government can improve efficiency and equity. In Cape Verde, where the public sec-tor is already providing a significant proportion of the population with preschool


services, the government role should focus on the more efficient use and distributionof public-sector resources. The preschools that have enjoyed the greatest success atthe least cost should be studied further and replicated. Focused ECCD-related train-ing should be provided to public-sector teachers. Resources to benefit the poorcould be redistributed by levying user charges on wealthier households, limitingpublic preschool access to poor families, or providing poor families with subsidies(scholarships, uniforms, nutrition, or health services) to encourage enrollment.

Government can improve quality. Government can act to improve the quality ofECCD services available through public- or private-sector providers. Governmentcan help equip local organizations and parents with the knowledge of what toexpect from ECCD providers in order to select or monitor their children's preschoolprogram. Government and donors should think "outside the box" of formal, tradi-tional preschool programs. They should encourage and support communities in thecreation of ECCD services and target whatever assistance is feasible to those com-munities that have acted to provide preschool or ECCD services.

What are the next steps in supporting ECCD in Africa? This study highlights sever-al issues that require further investigation, ranging from the longer-term impact ofpreschool on the performance of primary school students and the elusive factorsthat make a preschool effective to how best to expand access to preschool programswithout raising public expenditure burdens or pricing poor parents out of the pre-school market. The government of Guinea-with World Bank assistance-will ini-tiate ECCD pilot programs in the country's two poorest regions to provide a morein-depth and qualitative look at the features of successful programs, as well as theircosts, and to replicate them within the framework suggested by this study (commu-nity-based and parent-supported centers). In Cape Verde, several of the researchfindings-in particular, the equitable allocation of preschool resources and the effec-tiveness of government preschools-are subjects of the policy dialogue taking placebetween the government and the World Bank.

Policy Implications: What Can Government and Donors Do?

* Create a supportive policy framework* Encourage community and private-sector ECCD initiatives* Develop low-cost, effective, and realistic models of ECCD* Launch IEC and parental education campaigns* Work within a realistic investment framework.

Source: Jaramillo, A., and K. Tietjen. 2001. Early Childhood Development in Africa: Can We DoMore and Better for Less? A Look at the Impact and Implications of Preschools in Cape Verde andGuinea. The World Bank Africa Region Human DeveLopment Series. Washington, D.C.: World Bank.

May 2001

Prepared by Adriana Jaramillo and Karen Tietien. With special contributions from Marlaine Lockheed, Alain Mingat, Alan Ruby,Eduardo Velez, Adriaan Verspoor, and David Weikart. It is based on research conducted by Bruno Suchaut, in cooperation withSalim Diallo, in Guinea, and Malou Pail, in Cape Verde. The authors want to thank Mary Eming Young, Marito Garcia, andRobert Prouty. This research was conducted in cooperation swith the governments of Guinea and Cape Verde. Special thanksto the local research teams, preschool, parents, and communities who participated in the study.


ETHIOPIA

"Early Childhood Care and Development Interventions in Ethiopia"and "Child Labor in Ethiopia: Its Conditions and Link with Early &Childhood Education"

Task managers: Nicholas Bennet, Lead Human ResourcesSpecialist (AFMET)Christine Pena, Human Resources Economist(AFTH4)Anne Kielland, Consultant

Principal investigators: Tirussew Teffera, Ph.D., and Tezera Fisseha,M.D., M.P.H.

Associates: Workneh Neguatu, Ph.D., and Gudaye Emirie,M.A.

Ethiopia is one of the poorest countries in the world. It is plagued by extremely lowincome levels and poor social indicators (high rates of infant, under age five, andmaternal mortality; poor nutritional status; low rates of school enrollment andretention). Given that more than 50 percent of the population is estimated to live inpoverty, it is difficult for households and communities to provide children with ade-quate nutrition and care. This fact underscores the importance of providing ECCDservices to assist them in doing so. However, information on ECCD activities in thecountry is fragmentary and not readily available. ECCD seems not to have receivedthe necessary attention, and its linkages with overall human resources developmentefforts in Ethiopia have not been well established. These efforts include the 1994Education and Training Policy, which emphasizes the need to enhance young chil-dren's physical and mental development through early education, and the NationalHealth Policy, which emphasizes the importance of improving nutrition for pre-school children and supporting other programs that enhance the health of mothersand young children. There is also a Social Security Development Policy that declaresthe need to expand health, education, and social services targeted to preschool-agechildren and other programs designed to support families in child management andcare.

The purpose of this study is to review the experiences and impact of ECCD pro-grams run by NGOs and traditional providers (church, public, Koranic sites) inEthiopia to assist the government and project planners in formulating an effectiveECCD pilot project to be carried out under the existing Ethiopia Social Rehabilita-tion and Development Fund (ESRDF). The study covers three principal NGOs:namely Redd Barna (Save the Children Norway), Radda Barnen (Save the ChildrenSweden), and CCF (Christian Children's Fund), which support ECCD programs indifferent parts of the country. A total of nine ECCD centers were selected from themajor regions (Oromia, Amhara, and the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peo-ples Region), representing different ethnic groups and agro-economic and social set-tings. As an assessment tool, a longitudinal comparative tracer (retrospective cohort)method covering the previous 10-year period (1989/90-1998/99) was used.


Intervention groups (children participating in ECCD programs) and their parentsand comparable control groups (children not participating in ECCD programs) andtheir parents were identified from each of the nine ECCD centers. Children wereselected on the basis of school grades classified into three levels: lower (grades 1 and2), middle (grades 3, 4, and 5), and upper (grades 6, 7, and 8). Quantitative (inter-view, rapid assessment) and qualitative (focus group discussion, recall, and casestudy) methods were employed, and documents of NGOs and school rosters of theselected study subjects were consulted. A rapid assessment study of the educationalperformance of children in grade 2 with various early childhood educational back-grounds (church/Koran, community, NGO-based) as well as those without any earlychildhood educational experiences was conducted in eight schools in Addis Ababa.

The study Early Childhood Care and Development Interventions in Ethiopia wasextended into a second phase and followed by a study focusing on child labor issues.Child labor presents a serious challenge in Ethiopia today, even though several con-ventions were ratified by the government to stop the exploitation of young childrenin the labor market. According to Ethiopian labor law, child labor is indicated whenchildren under the age of 14 are engaged in full-time economic activities. Data onthe prevalence and the nature of child labor in the country have been generallyfragmentary and inadequate. Experience and data from secondary sources showthat the urban informal sector employs between 1.4 and 1.7 million people, repre-senting 78 percent of the population of economically active people in the urbanareas. As an important source of income for a large proportion of the labor force inEthiopia, the urban informal sector is also a major employer of children.

The factors that promote child labor are multifaceted and range from social, eco-nomic, and organizational to political and cultural. Some of the variables influenc-ing child labor are family structure, child-related predispositions, access to earlychildhood programs and school, and labor market conditions. But socioeconomiccharacteristics and particularly the high level of poverty have been identified as themain reasons for the persistence and fluctuating presence of children in the labormarket in Ethiopia. Development planners have predicted that access to early child-hood services would reduce the incidence of child labor, and several NGOs wereencouraged by the government to provide child-focused intervention programs inthe 1980s and 1990s.

The study on child labor in Ethiopia investigates the reasons children engage inchild labor, their socioeconomic background, and their persistence in the child labormarket. By examining the family structures, the community context, and the servic-es provided by NGOs, the study hopes to unravel the complex influences that pro-mote child labor and to explain why some children participate only temporarily inthe labor market and others turn it into a "career."


The specific objectives of the study are to:

1. Examine the types, nature, settings, causes, and consequences of child labor in theEthiopian context.

2. Analyze the working environment and the psychosocial and health conditions ofworking children.

3. Explain to what extent child-related factors such as family background, child-related predispositions, and level of poverty influence children's participation inthe labor market.

4. Explore the relationships between parents' background (socioeconomic back-ground, level of education) and child labor.

5. Examine the relationship between the participation of children in early childhoodprograms and their participation in child labor, particularly in comparison withchildren who do not participate in ECCD programs.

6. Suggest possible strategies and provide concrete operational recommendationsfor addressing and reducing the adverse effects of child labor in Ethiopia.

The primary study sample consisted of 180 children 6 to 14 years old engaged inchild labor to meet their livelihood or to support their families or dependents. Fromthe total number of 180 children, 82 participated in early childhood programs pro-vided by NGOs and traditional or public service providers, and 98 did not attendany type of early stimulation program. The children attending ECCD programswere selected by using purposive sampling procedures to overcome the difficultiesof getting an adequate number of children who passed through early childhood pro-grams, particularly the ones provided by NGOs. The nonprogram children wereselected randomly because the number of children in this group, as expected, wasadequate. The parents and guardians of the children attending programs and notattending programs were identified and interviewed.

Sources: World Bank, February 2000. Analysis of Early Childhood Development and Care Interven-tions in Ethiopia. World Bank, March 2001. Child Labor in Ethiopia: Its Conditions and Link withEarly Childhood Education.

April 2001


KENYA

'Impact of Early Childhood Development Programs on Women'sLabor Force Participation and Older Children's Schooling in Kenya"

Task manager: Marito Garcia, Lead Economist (AFTH1)

Principal researchers: Michael Lokshin (DECRG), Elena Glinskaya(SASPR), and Marito Garcia (AFTH1)

Background

About 20,000 ECD centers provided preschool education and day care for morethan 1 million children ages three to six (roughly 30 percent in that age group) inKenya in 1995. A process of rapidly evolving grassroots mobilization and capacitybuilding increased this number to about 26,300 by the end of 2000.

The study "Impact of Early Childhood Development Programs on Women'sLabor Force Participation and Older Children's Schooling in Kenya" analyzes theeffect of childcare costs on household behavior in Kenya. For households with chil-dren ages three to six, the study models the demand for mothers' participation inpaid work, the participation in paid work of other household members, householddemand for schooling, and household demand for childcare.

Kenya is known for its highly effective, decentralized, community-based ECDprograms. Communities are involved in these types of early stimulation programsfrom the start, and today communities manage about 70 percent of all ECD centersand preschools in Kenya. These programs are started on a "harambee" basis.Through "harambee," communities provide land; raise funds to construct andmaintain physical facilities; provide furniture, materials, and labor; and pay teach-ers' salaries. In some preschools, parents and communities have initiated communi-ty-based feeding programs and growth-monitoring activities. For feeding programs,parents contribute ingredients and cooking and eating utensils. They either hire acook or take turns preparing food for the children.

When a community expresses a demand for an ECD center, the government pro-vides technical support and a minimal financial contribution. With the help of localauthorities, the community identifies teachers or caregivers, who are then trained bythe national government through the National Center for Early Childhood Education(NACECE). NACECE, a semi-autonomous body within the Ministry of Education,has developed a universal training program and preschool curriculum. The commu-nity establishes the training center; provides physical facilities such as land, buildings,materials, and equipment; and manages the ECD center. School fees cover the coststo pay teachers' salaries and school maintenance. A community-elected school com-mittee manages the center and its program. Teachers' salaries, which are paid by thecommunity, the county council, local authorities, the church, or private organiza-tions, vary widely depending on the source of payment.

The national government is only minimally involved in the management of ECDprograms at the local level and rather assumes the role as a regulator and trainer.The communities, local authorities, and parents manage the facilities and are thedirect supervisors in terms of the quality of service provided. Communities identifythe needs of the programs, and any demand for assistance comes from them.


Kenya's ECD programs predominantly target children three to six years old.However, in many urban areas, arid and semi-arid areas, and plantations, childrenunder the age of three also attend child development centers. Most of these centersrun half-day, offering three-hour preschool sessions. Child growth monitoring con-stitutes an integrated part of Kenya's ECD programs. Nutrition programs, however,are offered only in arid and semi-arid areas. About 25 to 30 percent of child devel-opment centers in these areas are owned and run by local authorities, NGOs, andthe private sector, and these may remain open until 4 p.m.

The program in Kenya, like that in Colombia, uses a self-targeted approach.NACECE operates as an advocate for preschool activities and offers information,material, advice, and training to communities on how to start and run a preschool.After this initial assistance, the communities are responsible for developing the pro-gram further. This self-targeted approach makes it difficult to establish centers thatcan reach a satisfactorily high number of children from the poorest households.Poor regions with the weakest institutional capacity often lack the skills andresources necessary even to design viable project proposals.

Methodology

The data for this study come from two sources. The 1994 Kenya Welfare Monitor-ing Survey (WMS II) provides information on 10,860 households (59,200 individu-als), including 6,624 households with children between the ages of three and seven.The survey is based on a multistage sampling and includes questions on the modesof childcare arrangements made for the children in the household, and the amountof money paid for formal childcare. The part of the questionnaire administered toeach individual household member yields data on each household member's laboractivity and earnings. Information about childcare facilities was collected by theKenyan Ministry of Education with the help of the World Bank in 1995. A surveywas conducted on a sample of more than 800 childcare facilities in 17 districts orurban centers in Kenya, representing urban, pastoralist, and other rural areas. TheKenya Early Childhood Development Centers Survey is a stratified random samplethat represents each of the sponsorship types in the country. The survey collectedinformation on the center's location, enrollment, operating expenditures, financialstatus, and facilities. Data on the characteristics and salaries of teaching and non-teaching staff, the extent of turnover, and child-feeding practices were also collect-ed.

The data were tested against a simple theoretical framework of household utilitymaximization that yields empirically testable implications for the relationshipbetween the price of childcare and household behavior. Hypotheses were tested byjointly estimating a system of reduced-form equations of the demand for quality ofchildcare, schooling for older boys and girls, and leisure of the mother and otherhousehold members.

The Main Conclusions of the Study

The estimations reveal that mothers' decisions about participating in the labor mar-ket are sensitive to changes in both wages and the cost of childcare. Higher wages


that mothers can earn outside the home encourage them to enter the labor force,whereas higher-cost childcare suppresses maternal employment. Households' deci-sions about young children's participation in ECD programs are found to be verysensitive to the cost of care. Higher-cost childcare discourages households fromusing ECD programs. Both maternal wage rates and cost of care affect schoolenrollment of school-age children. The influence of these factors on a household'sdecisions about its children's schooling is determined by a combination of incomeand substitution effects. An increase in mothers' wages raises school participation ofboys; in this case, the income effect dominates the substitution effect. But the moth-ers' wage increase depresses the school enrollment of girls; in this case, girls substi-tute for the mother in home production. Higher prices for childcare have no signif-icant effect on boys' schooling and significantly decrease the number of girls atschool.

The study concludes that a high cost of childcare discourages households fromusing formal care facilities and has a negative effect on mothers' participation inlabor market work. But community-run ECD centers, as an alternative model toformal childcare services, encourage women to work. The results also indicate thatthe cost of childcare and level of mothers' wages affect older children's schoolenrollment, but these factors affect boys' and girls' schooling differently. An increasein mothers' wages increases boys' enrollment but depresses girls' enrollment. Thepresence of ECD centers positively affects enrollment of girls, because as centersprovide childcare services, they partly liberate older girls from childcare responsi-bilities in the household.


MAURITIUS

"Analysis of Early Child Development in Mauritius-Day Care andHome Care Programs: Quality, Cost, and Accreditation"(7 volumes with individual titles)

Task manager: Susan Opper, Senior Education Specialist(AFTH4)

Principal investigator: Chazal du Mee (Consulting firm)

Mauritius has been at the forefront in the Africa Region in recognizing the enor-mous potential and distinctive role of ECD as a contributor to the economic andsocial welfare of a country over the long term. In the mid-1990s, the governmentreviewed the potential advantages of programs targeted at either preventing or deal-ing with social problems early to avoid costly interventions later. Zero-to-three earlychildhood development was one such program.

Full employment in Mauritius was also raising the need for day-care facilities foryoung children as mothers engaged in greater numbers in paid employment. Partic-ularly in the Export Processing Zone (EPZ), at least two-thirds of the employees arefemale. To provide day care for young children, the Ministry of Women, FamilyWelfare, and Child Development initiated five day-care centers sponsored by theEPZ Labor Welfare Fund, the Sugar Industry Labor Welfare Fund, and the ministry.Workers, employers, and government contribute to the fund.

Building from this base, the government articulated a national program of sup-port through which it facilitates the provision of affordable, high-quality care forchildren in the age group zero to three years. Technical expertise and ESW con-tributed by the World Bank (World Bank 1998), in active partnership with UNICEF,assisted the Ministry of Women, Family Welfare, and Child Development in craft-ing a National ECD Policy Paper that was approved by Parliament in June 1998.The government's major policy objectives are to:

* Establish a system of integrated services for ECD by defining roles and respon-sibilities of government and nongovernmental institutions, the private sector,and communities.

* Support a newly created national accreditation system for quality and improve-ment of child care in which peer review and self-study play a large role.

* Support and expand education and training of management personnel andECD workers.

* Promote parental education and community awareness and investment in ECD.

* Develop a flexible curriculum framework for the care of children zero to threeyears old.

* Promote equity in access to ECD services, with emphasis on affordability ofcare and on strategies to reach children with special needs.

Additional technical assistance from the World Bank supported the Ministry ofWomen to prepare the complementary Implementation Plan for the policy paper


that was approved by Parliament in August 1999. The plan sets out a sequence oftwo phases. The first gives priority to establishing a national advocacy and com-munication strategy for ECD, developing a supportive legal framework for the ECDsector, and strengthening mechanisms of service provision particularly to pilot mod-els for ECD service delivery in deprived areas. During the second phase of the Imple-mentation Plan, center-based and home-based ECD facilities will be expanded whilemonitoring, evaluation, and research capacity for the sector are reinforced.

The government's commitment to implementation was immediately seen in pro-visions in the national budget 1999-2000 to exempt all pedagogical materials andequipment for day-care centers from customs duty; to provide a 50 percent increasein the grant to the EPZ to enable an increase in its number of day-care facilities; andto provide incentives to other factories, enterprises, and parastatal bodies to set upday-care facilities for workers at or near their workplace.

Source: World Bank. 1998. An Analysis of Early Childhood Development-Daycare and HomeCare Programs: Quality, Cost and Accreditation (7 volumes). Washington, D.C.: World Bank.

April 2000


Children in Extremely Difficult Circumstances

In many African countries, risk situations for children have dramatically increasedover the past two decades. Indeed, the understanding of what constitutes categoriesof at-risk children had to undergo a radical transformation after the AIDS crisis,intermittent wars, and dislocation. In the past, the definition of Children inExtremely Difficult Circumstances (CEDC) comprised the internationally recog-nized categories of street children, children exposed to sexual trafficking or haz-ardous or strenuous labor or both, and children affected by armed conflict. AIDSand the widespread problem of endemic conflicts have vastly changed the nature ofrisks that children face and swelled the numbers of those at risk. Children in muchof Africa today require protection from bodily injury, exposure to war and violence,physical abuse, emotional abuse and neglect, exposure to hazardous materials orconditions, insecurity, constant movements (migration) and displacement, malnutri-tion and poverty, and different forms of child labor. Most at-risk children lackaccess to basic social services and education programs.

CHILDREN AFFECTED BY HIV/AIDS

HIV/AIDS is becoming a major constraint to fighting poverty in most African coun-tries. The epidemic is depriving millions of children of parents, families, teachers,homes, and the basic support they need to survive and grow. The World Bank isplaying a stronger role than ever in responding to HIV/AIDS by mainstreaming it inall aspects of its work in Africa. Increasingly, services are targeted to address theneeds of young children affected by HIV/AIDS.

In Sub-Saharan Africa today, 1 million children are infected with HIV, and anestimated 12 million have been orphaned by AIDS (UNAIDS 2000). Even if they donot become infected or orphaned, children living in households where family mem-bers are suffering from HIV/AIDS are affected by the loss of income, shifting atten-tion, less care, social stigma, and limited access to early childhood programs as aresult of the family's coping mechanisms. The shift in family resource allocationaffects children's overall growth, health status, emotional well-being, and cognitivedevelopment. It is estimated that 70 percent of AIDS orphans in rural areas nevergo to school (UNAIDS/UNICEF 1999).

The increasing number of child-headed households in some African countriesindicates the lack of capacity and support structure within families and communi-ties to care for vulnerable children. As the traditional extended family system can-not absorb all of the children in need, millions of children find themselves impover-ished, ill, alone, and caring for others. Children living in these households are dis-proportionately disadvantaged in access to basic health services, education, food,and water. The primary caregivers for the youngest children often become theirolder siblings, who themselves are vulnerable in terms of social and physical assetsand whose assumption of family responsibilities deprives them of opportunities toimprove their own situation through, for example, attending school. In addition, the


AIDS epidemic is limiting the availability of other caregivers and teachers by signif-icantly reducing the number of personnel and capacities in the education and healthsectors.

UNAIDS estimates that mortality rates for children less than age five as a resultof AIDS will have increased 100 percent by the year 2010 in all countries presentlymost affected (UNAIDS Q & As 1999). These countries are mainly concentrated inSub-Saharan Africa. Since the beginning of the epidemic, some 3 million childrenhave been born with HIV infection, almost 90 percent of them in Sub-SaharanAfrica, and 1,800 are born with the infection every day, globally (UNAIDS/UNICEF2000).

Infection in infants and young children is typically a direct result of HIV preva-lence among pregnant women, with an average vertical transmission rate frommother to child of 25-35 percent. In areas with high HIV infection rates such asSub-Saharan Africa, the infection rate is disproportionately high among girls andwomen. Girls between the ages of 15 and 19 account for nearly 50 percent of thenew HIV infections, and a high percentage of girls in this age group are either preg-nant or already mothers (Lorey 2000). This trend has serious implications for thechildren born, because of the estimated 400,000 African children less than 15 yearsof age now infected by HIV/AIDS, 90 percent became infected through mother-childtransmission (Plan International). Whether the children become infected themselvesor not, they are likely to have sick mothers unable to care for them or they will losetheir mothers to AIDS when they are still very young. In addition, population move-ments and the breakdown of social control in situations of armed conflict, current-ly affecting more than 60 percent of African countries, correlates with the spread ofsexually transmitted disease (STD) and increasing HIV infection rates. Statistics forRwanda, for example, show a sixfold increase in HIV infection rates amongrefugees in camps (UNAIDS/WHO 1998).

The Bank country teams are preparing HIV/AIDS action plans that incorporateHIV/AIDS components into existing projects. There are various ways in whichAIDS-afflicted communities can be assisted:

* Ensuring that governments protect the rights of vulnerable and affected families

* Increasing access to education

* Supporting HIV/AIDS prevention education and campaigns

* Strengthening health sectors, promoting counseling and support for peopleinfected with HIV and their families

* Financing income-generating projects

* Promoting behavioral change to reduce transmission rates and

* Targeting young children and providing them with high-quality health, nutri-tion, protective, psychosocial, and educational services. Training caregiversand teachers and increased capacities and resources of families and communi-ties to better care for HIV/AIDS-affected children are two key approaches tosupport these children.


"Early Childhood Development and HIV/AIDS: Helping Communities toCare for Young Children in Vulnerable Circumstances"

Task manager: Susan Opper, Senior Education Specialist(AFTH4),

Technical Director: Kristine Hauge Storholt, Consultant (AFTH4)

Cross-country studies show that on average, one in three HIV/AIDS orphans inAfrica is younger than five years, placing the number of AIDS orphans ages zero tofive (who have lost one or both parents) at more than 4 million, most of them inAfrica. This number is projected to more than double by 2010 if the current trendcontinues.

To respond to this threat, the Africa Region of the World Bank has launched aspecial program for AIDS Orphans and Children in Extremely Difficult Circum-stances. In the context of this initiative and complementary to efforts of ACT Africa(the World Bank AIDS Campaign Team for Africa), the Africa Region's ECD Team,and the Education Group of the Human Development Network (HDNED) havetaken up the challenge to fill the gap in addressing children affected by HIV/AIDSbetween zero and seven years old. Preventive and curative efforts against HIV/AIDSare no longer limited to the health sector. The problem needs to be addressed acrossall sectors and at all levels of society. It has therefore been identified as an impor-tant component of the World Bank's education sector strategy.

Project Objectives

The "Early Childhood Development and HIV/AIDS: Helping Communities to Carefor Young Children in Vulnerable Circumstances" project will develop prototypesof tools and resources for protection and care of young children affected byHIV/AIDS. These will provide direct and concrete guidance for community work-ers and caregivers to help ensure the healthy growth and development of young chil-dren who are made vulnerable or orphaned by AIDS.

The products of the project will consist of materials for operational use in pro-grams that address the effects of HIV/AIDS on young children. Task managers, gov-ernments, and nongovernmental agencies designing such interventions-in the formof sector and multisector projects, community demand-driven social funds, etc.-have an immediate need of concrete content that can be used on a large scale formobilization and training at the community level. Most of the materials that havebeen produced and made available in other contexts (e.g., by NGOs) have beendesigned for relatively small-scale operations and are rarely in a format that sup-ports large-scale operations. In addition, capacities within affected countries to pro-duce and replicate materials that can be used effectively on a large scale are virtu-ally nonexistent.

Tangible contents for training of caregivers and direct intervention with childrenwill be produced for everyday use in the field. The tools will be tested in two pilotcountries during the first project year through different communication channels,including distance learning and face-to-face interaction. The pilot is being designed


for use on a large scale and easy adaptation to other countries in the region. Thematerials will be in the form of booklets, cartoons, posters, videos, radio programs,or cassettes to be used for mobilizing and training teachers and caregivers, villagemanagement committees, NGOs, and community-based organizations workingwith or providing services for young children, with specific attention to care andpsychosocial support for children affected by HIV/AIDS. Where possible, the devel-oped tools will be incorporated into World Bank-supported projects in Sub-SaharanAfrica.

The methodology and pedagogy of learning objectives for caregivers and youngchildren will be centered around four main project elements: (a) appropriate careand cognitive stimulation for children ages three to seven years old; (b) psycholog-ical coping mechanisms and positive self-esteem of young children; (c) referral sys-tems for caregivers and young children; and (d) local capacity building for ECDthrough training of caregivers.

Expected Results

* Caregivers in households affected by HIV/AIDS will acquire a basic knowledgeand understanding of the situation of young children made vulnerable byHIV/AIDS, particularly orphans, and how to respond to their health, nutri-tional, psychosocial, and educational needs.

* Affected families (e.g., child-headed, single-parent, or elder-headed house-holds) will be able to cope better with HIV infection and AIDS and to allevi-ate the impact on young children by adequately caring for them.

* Several program options for community-based support, including attention topsychosocial well-being, will have been developed and tested.

* These actions will also generate and reinforce local capacity for ECD at thecommunity level.

Complementary to this project, HDNED's Early Child Development Team hasdeveloped a "Child Needs Assessment Toolkit" for collecting information fordesigning programs to help young children affected by HIV/AIDS. Information onthis project can be obtained from Amber Surrency at [email protected].

CHILDREN AFFECTED BY LOSS OF THEIR PARENTS

AIDS orphans are an increasingly visible and large at-risk group of children (see Fig-ure), as are children who are orphaned because one or both of their parents die inarmed conflict or are missing. Children in households where parents are sick, dying,or trapped in long-term poverty or children in grandparent-headed households areat risk, for example, of dropping out of school, because capacities at household lev-els are weakened as grandparents are incapacitated or other caregivers in the house-hold are overwhelmed with caring for AIDS-infected adults. Recent evidence sug-gests that children from very poor families are often expelled from rural homes tofend for themselves in nearby towns, where most of them end up as street children.


To this extent, the problem has both a rural and an urbandimension. Thus, in much of Africa, children with or without AIDS Orphans in Sub-Saharanparents and exposed to varying degrees of vulnerability have Africa under 18 yearsemerged as the single largest at-risk group in both rural and 40

urban areas. From the perspective of preserving the human 35 35 millioncapital asset for the future, the greatest single challenge inAfrica is to provide adequate social protection to orphans and 30

other children at risk.If this challenge cannot be met, the long-term economic and 25

social costs on local and national economies and the society at E 20

large will be immense. In the longer term, countries will suffer .7 14 million

from a reduction in productive human capital, a poorly edu- Z 1 lcated population, and an increasing number of children who 10will become alienated from their communities in the form of

5crime, drug and alcohol abuse, being made vulnerable toabuse, child labor, and sexual trafficking. Addressing the needs 0of orphaned children is not only a human rights issue but an 2000 2010

essential investment in future economic well-being and politi-cal stability for African countries.

Vulnerable children under age five inAIDS-affected areas face special risks: AIDS Orphansthe risk of mother-to-child transmis- 2.5

sion of HIV, mortality, morbidity, and 2psychosocial damage. In many coun- 2.0

tries, the idiosyncratic shock for a child 1.7of losing one or both parents is often 1.5combined with a systemic shock 1.5

caused, for example, by drought or E

war. Such compounding of risk severe- c i.o

ly aggravates the situation of children.Recent estimates and surveys moni- os 5

toring demographics and living stan- o.sdard present a grim picture of the mag-nitude of the problem. For the region 0.0as a whole, current estimates place the Zambia Kenya Zimbabwe

number of (AIDS)-orphaned children M 1995-1996 m 1999-2000 2010

(one or both parents) alone to bearound 14 million by 2000. This num-ber is projected to reach 35 million in 2010 (UNAIDS 2000). Across African coun-tries, the proportion of children at risk and the total number of children are con-verging to reach between 20 and 35 percent within the next 10 years. In Zambia,for example, 13 percent of all children in the age group 0 to 18 are orphans; thisnumber is projected to increase from 550,000 in 1996 to 1.7 million by 2010. Ofall reported current orphans, 78 percent are victims of the HIV epidemic. In addition,street children are estimated to number around 76,000. In Kenya, the proportion oforphans to total child population, and their absolute numbers, were 12 percent and


1.5 million in 1999; these are projected to increase to 20 percent and 2.3 millionrespectively, by 2010. In 1996, Uganda housed 1,037,228 orphans, or 11.6 percentof the child population of the country. In Tanzania, the Demographic and HealthSurvey estimated the number of orphans to be 8.5 percent of all children. In Zim-babwe, orphans were estimated to be 670,000 in 2000, or 17 percent of all children.The number is projected to increase to 1.5 million or 36 percent of child populationby 2010. In Malawi, orphans are estimated to be 10-15 percent of all children.Even in a small country such as Eritrea, there are at least 90,000 orphans who havelost their parents either in conflict or from AIDS.

Who Is Caring for Orphans?

True to the African tradition, it appears that the problem is largely being absorbedby the communities, which are taking upon themselves the task of rearing orphans.But recent evidence suggests that the bulk of the burden is falling on some of thepoorest families. The Zambia Participatory Assessment Group showed that morethan 70 percent of households keeping orphans belong to the "very poor," where-as only about 10 percent of orphans were cared for by "rich" households.

Although the extended family and grandparents are the primary caregivers, insome countries, the church and nongovernmental agencies are also playing animportant role in protecting and caring for orphans. In Malawi, for example, Com-munity-based Options for Protection and Empowerment (COPE), an NGO, was setup in 1995 to deal with the crisis of orphans. In Zambia, about 40 NGOs are oper-ating programs for orphans, street children, and other children in need. Church-sponsored orphanages are operating in Zimbabwe and Kenya, but their outreach islimited. In some countries, UNICEF has agreed to assist NGOs and communityorganizations. For example, in Zambia, under the auspices of UNICEF, NGOsworking in the area of child welfare have been brought together to form the Chil-dren In Need Network (CHIN). This organization is providing support to registeredNGOs working with vulnerable children.

Although private and community responses to the crisis of children in need havebeen widespread and commendable, recent evidence clearly shows that civil societyand the communities are unable to cope with the crisis. Surveys suggest thatorphans in foster families are often systematically disadvantaged and discriminatedagainst in food allocation and, most important, care (Ayieko 1998). Childrenyounger than five who are maternal orphans are extremely vulnerable to serious ill-ness (Foster 1998). Focus group interviews report that children are often stigma-tized as having AIDS because they have lost a parent to illness. As a consequence,some health service providers are unwilling to vaccinate them (O'Gara, Huffman,and Lusk 2000). In addition, orphans in foster families often feel excluded withinthe family and marginalized in the community. These findings point to the specialvulnerability of orphaned children and underline some of the problems associatedwith the care given by foster parents and communities. Clearly, the extended fami-ly as the traditional African support system is being pushed to a breaking point inthe most badly affected communities.


Public Responses:The Role of the Bank

The preceding analysis suggests that (a) Children in Extremely Difficult Circum-stances (CEDCs) have emerged as the single largest vulnerable group in the conti-nent; (b) efforts largely driven by communities and nongovernmental agencies havebeen insufficient; (c) public action is highly desirable to launch a large-scaleresponse to strengthen and combine the various initiatives into a comprehensiveprogram of care for orphans and other children at risk; and (d) specific public pol-icy responses need to be sensitive to the varying country and household circum-stances.

Government responses to the crisis vary across countries. In Eritrea, the govern-ment launched a large-scale program of reintegration of orphans with nearest rela-tives and a program of group homes since 1991 and is expanding the program withassistance of an IDA credit approved in July 2000 as a component of the EarlyChildhood Development Project. Some countries have issued policy statementsfocusing on orphans, for example, Zimbabwe with the Orphans Policy Statement.

In Zimbabwe, the government is preparing an enhanced social protection pro-gram with IDA assistance, which aims to reach CEDCs in multiple ways. One of thecomponents is the Basic Education Assistance Module (BEAM), which will preventorphans and other vulnerable children from dropping out of school by providingtargeted school fee and levy waivers to highly vulnerable children identified by com-munities. The BEAM is national in scope in recognition of the scale of need. Anoth-er component will provide small grants to community groups working with CEDCsthat may be used in a variety of ways, including matching support for informal safe-ty nets, nutrition and growth monitoring, home-based care for people with AIDS torelease child labor, ECD training and materials, etc. The grants will require a com-munity contribution in recognition of existing community efforts so that publicfunding has maximum impact by leveraging community initiatives rather than dis-placing them. They will also have provision for continuing funding for multipleyears, in recognition of the long-term nature of the challenge posed by vulnerablechildren and orphans. This component will initially be a pilot in 10 districts to bemonitored and evaluated, with the potential to be scaled up nationally as soon asfeasible.

The role of the Bank is to be delineated against the backdrop of community ini-tiatives, government actions, and other donor initiatives. The crisis is so vast inmagnitude that any level of financial assistance from the World Bank would not beadequate to the situation. Notwithstanding the above-mentioned efforts of donors,governments, and communities, evidence is accumulating that more needs to bedone to avert a crisis of monumental proportions. The involvement of an interna-tionally credible institution like the World Bank will help mobilize resources fromother multilateral agencies, bilateral agencies, and, most important, the corporateworld, including commercial banks, which themselves are looking for mechanismsto assist in this emergency as part of their civic responsibility globally. This will alsoleverage the entry of the church, mosque, temples, and religious organizations in aclimate of globally dwindling resources for welfare programs. HIPC and otherfunds from Poverty Reduction Strategy operations (in the context of PRSPs) could


be leveraged with the entry of the Bank into this operation. Commercial banks canplay a role in two ways: they can co-finance a part of operations, and they can helpin subcontracting financial disbursements to community groups and NGOs.

The World Bank has engaged in several global and national initiatives to combatthe AIDS epidemic, but the issue of rehabilitation of orphans has received littleattention so far. In fact, in this respect, other donor agencies such as UNICEF andUSAID have taken a lead in addressing the issue, albeit in only a few countries. Incoordination and collaboration with other donors, the Bank could play a decisiverole in leveraging IDA resources to attract multilateral and bilateral donors as wellas the private sector and philanthropic foundations.

The Africa Region of the World Bank plans to take up this initiative by (a) iden-tifying country settings where nationwide actions can be taken on behalf of childrenthrough existing lending operations or through new credit, and (b) consolidating theknowledge base on approaches to protect orphans and other children at risk andmake good practice information available to task team leaders. Potential countriesfor possible lending operations will span a mix of conditions affecting children rang-ing from a high level of HIV/AIDS infection to conflict and post-conflict settings toentrenched poverty.

By collecting information on the current status of vulnerable children, andorphans in particular, at the initiative of governments, countries show their com-mitment to addressing children at risk. The governments of Zambia and Malawi,for example, have undertaken several efforts to address this issue. Taking advantageof available knowledge and country interests, also from existing early childhoodprojects (e.g., Eritrea, Kenya, Uganda), the Africa Region proposes to launchpreparatory activities for operations providing support to communities, NGOs(including the church and religious organizations), and individual families to fosterthe care of children.

Bank operations would be strongly embedded in community action to strength-en existing community efforts and efforts of NGOs, including church organizations.The particular form of intervention will depend on the nature and extent of the pre-vailing community involvement and the nature of the problem in each country set-ting. A number of different strategies will be tested in different countries:

* Organize and provide necessary support (including financial support) for theintegration of orphans into extended families and unrelated families.

* Organize small group homes, each tending about 15 orphans and supervisedby two foster mothers.

* In districts where the scale of the problem is very large, consider Children's Vil-lages to achieve economies of scale and strategic support.

* Provide support to NGO- and church-run orphanages.

Complementary to these efforts, the initiative will establish an information systemfor (a) monitoring the condition of orphans and their families under diverse pro-gram interventions and, where possible, carrying out long-term follow-up studies toevaluate the program as a whole and (b) coordinating the efforts of various actorsand developing a global network of action groups.


Africa's Orphans and Vulnerable Children: Issues and Good Practice ProgramOptions (Subbarao, Mattimore, and Plangemann 2001) presents a foundation for acomprehensive situation analysis to help the World Bank's Africa Region address theissue of CEDCs more systematically. This background paper will help develop coun-try dialogue and programs mainstreaming the issue of orphans and vulnerable chil-dren into the World Bank's human development and social protection strategies andoperations.

CHILDREN IN ARMED CONFLICT

Civil conflicts disturbed 29 of the 48 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa in 1996-about 60 percent of all countries. Most conflicts have not only led to hundreds ofthousands of deaths but resulted in severe human suffering, psychological trauma,material devastation, loss of human capital, and damage to the social system. At theend of 1996, conflicts in Sub-Saharan Africa had created some 6.2 million refugeesand internally displaced persons, representing approximately a third of the world-wide total; 80 percent of all refugees are women and children. It is estimated thatworldwide, more than 2 million children have been killed in armed conflicts since1987, 6 million have been seriously injured or permanently disabled, 12 millionhave been left homeless, and more than 1 million have been orphaned or separatedfrom their parents. Around the world, more than 10 million children are psycho-logically traumatized as a result of war (Otunnu 1998; UNICEF 1996).

Wars have been exacerbated by a qualitative change in the nature and scope ofconflict in recent years. Today's conflicts in Africa are primarily internal, hittingcivilian casualties, including families with children, hardest. In war-affected soci-eties, parents, other family members-and increasingly, single mothers-are unableto provide appropriate care and protection for their children. Children experiencethe devastating effects of violent power struggles between adults and of the lostsecurity of their communities and families, which are often disintegrated.

Not only do children become direct victims of war, but some are forced to takean active part in the fighting as child soldiers. A much larger group of children isdeprived of family care and social services that provide for physical, psychosocial,and emotional needs. Armed conflict also exposes children, especially girls, to sex-ual abuse and gender-based violence. Recently, HIV/AIDS was identified as the mostpowerful new factor compounding the dangers for children in conflict (Machel2000). HIV/AIDS has been recognized as a global threat to peace and security, andthe chaotic and brutal circumstances of war aggravate all the factors that fuel theHIV/AIDS pandemic.

Early Child Development in Conflict-Affected Countries

Conflict increases young children's exposure to malnutrition, disease, and perma-nent psychosocial damage by disrupting family structures and eroding traditionalsocial safety nets. The infant mortality rates for countries in conflict are 50 percenthigher than the average for Sub-Saharan Africa and about twice the average forAfrican countries that are not in conflict. Generally, more children die from disease,


malnutrition, and other indirect consequences of violence than from direct violentattacks. During and after violent conflicts, food security drops 50 percent or morebelow pre-conflict levels. The incidence of human wasting is about twice as high inwar-torn countries than in those in transition or in nonconflict situations. It is esti-mated that under conflict conditions, 50 to 95 percent of the deaths of childrenunder age five are attributable to diarrheal diseases, acute respiratory infections,measles, and other infectious diseases (International Committee of the Red Cross[ICRC] 1994). In African countries, where children are already disproportionatelyvulnerable to malnutrition and disease, armed conflict increases child mortalityrates by up to 24 times.

Given that early life experiences determine a child's future learning capacity, pro-ductivity, and income-earning potential, there is a great risk that in war-affectedcountries, entire generations will be condemned to poverty. The World Bank, alongwith its partners, seeks to lessen the impact of war on children in Sub-SaharanAfrica by promoting investments in early childhood programs and communityreconstruction. Strategies for such interventions and investments in children under-score the long-term benefits of ECD programs in conflict and post-conflict coun-tries. These programs will have a twofold benefit: They will (a) reduce the vulnera-bility of young children to conflict-related risks of death, disease, malnutrition, andpermanent psychosocial damage and (b) contribute to the recovery and economicgrowth of conflict-affected countries through gains in educational achievement andlabor market outcomes.

As a first step, the Africa Region has completed a quantitative and qualitativeanalysis of the impact of violent conflict on children younger than seven years ofage. The results of this study provide up-to-date information about internationaldevelopments in the field of ECD with a specific focus on program applications inSub-Saharan Africa. The report, "An Overview of the Impact of Violent Conflict onYoung Children and a Strategy for World Bank Intervention" (Opper and Storholt2000), includes an assessment of young children's needs in difficult circumstancesand reviews options for World Bank assistance in conflict-affected countries. Thereport proposes a regional strategy for early interventions consistent with the roleof the international community in Africa's conflict and post-conflict countries. Italso calls for the World Bank to take a more proactive role in seeking to improvethe quantity, quality, and financial sustainability of social services for the poor insuch countries.

The report is intended to assist World Bank project managers and staff in devel-oping effective country-specific strategies for meeting the nutritional, health, andpsychosocial needs of young children. During the early stages of the transition fromwar to peace, many opportunities exist to promote the holistic development of youngchildren. The report proposes that interventions enhance community developmentand child-caring capacities of parents, siblings, and other caregivers instead of focus-ing on preschool or center-based ECD approaches. Community participation, cul-tural sensitivity, and the use of indigenous knowledge are identified as key principlesin crafting an ECD strategy that will build consensus around a child-centered devel-opment agenda. The report also addresses the institutional and financial implicationsof the World Bank's involvement in developing and implementing such a strategy.


Although little information exists on the costs of ECD programs in conflict-affected countries, the report presents a framework for estimating financing needsbased on data from recent World Bank projects and other studies. The lack ofresources to cover the recurrent costs of ECD programs such as salaries, equipment,and supplies, is a major challenge to the success of ECD in most conflict and post-conflict transition settings. Recommendations provide concrete guidelines on howto use modified versions of social funds and specially targeted external and privatedonor trust funds to support the governments and communities in the short to medi-um term. Finally, the report attempts to link ECD in conflict and post-conflict tran-sition settings with wider issues of debt relief and poverty reduction under theenhanced HIPC initiative. ECD is thus presented as a possible starting point forpost-conflict countries that wish to establish a track record of poverty reductionbefore the HIPC decision point.

Capacity Building

Study Tour for African Policy Makers

StudyTourto Mexico March 13-17,2000

Task managers: Adriana Jaramillo, Education Specialist (AFTH2)Eduardo Velez Bustillo, Country Sector Leader,LCC1F (Mexico)

March 13-17, 2000, an African delegation of 25 education specialists and govern-ment officials from Cape Verde, Guinea, Mali, Rwanda, Senegal, and Chad visitedMexico to look at the country's policies, practices, and experiences related to ECDprograms. The African countries selected were characterized by being at a very earlystage of designing and developing ECD programs or project components. The activ-ity was jointly sponsored by the World Bank's Africa Region ECD Team, the Mex-ico Country Management Unit (LCC1C), and the Consejo National de FomentoEducativo (CONAFE), Mexico. CONAFE is a private agency recognized as a leaderin Mexico's nonformal preschool efforts. Its programs, often designed as a commu-nity-based model, extend educational opportunities to remote rural areas reachingout to poor children, indigenous groups, and children of migrant farm workers.

The objective of the study tour was to provide an opportunity for ECD programmanagers and policy makers from Africa to learn more about the implementationof low-cost, community-based ECD programs in rural areas. Specifically, thisincluded opportunities to (a) review the different components of training programsfor ECD caregivers, (b) see different models of parent and community intervention,(c) become familiar with a particular example of interinstitutional collaboration andmechanism of cooperation between education and health programs, and (d) inves-tigate the link between ECD community-based programs and community primaryschools.

These learning objectives derived from the need for African countries to identifylow-cost, high-quality program options to be able to provide services to an increas-ing number of poor children in rural areas. The programs visited gave the partici-pants the opportunity to interact with consolidated community-based projects thatemphasize a child-centered pedagogy and an integrated ECD approach by combin-

77


ing health, nutrition, early stimulation, and educational interventions. At the sametime, the programs chosen presented a low-cost model to reach out to the ruralareas of Mexico.

The study tour applied a combination of different learning methods, includingpresentations from international and Mexican ECD experts, roundtable discus-sions, presentations from participants, site visits, and report writing. Before theyarrived, participants were asked to prepare a summary of the ECD-related initia-tives in their own countries. This helped them to reflect upon their own practicesand to work within a framework to evaluate their learning experiences during thestudy tour. Two full days of site visits complemented presentations by CONAFE.During the site visits, participants were able to observe how young teachers managemultilevel classrooms applying a child-centered pedagogy. The curriculum includeddifferent play-oriented approaches to teach math, sciences, social sciences, nutri-tion, health care, and environmental protection. Parent education sessions illustrat-ed the implementation of programs targeted to children ages zero to three years. Inaddition, all programs presented a high level of community participation in ECDand primary school programs.

Lessons Learned

- Good-quality teacher training is a key element of successful implementation ofCONAFE's initiatives. The model is based on selecting young, committed peoplefrom the local community and training them as teachers. These young studentsare semi-volunteers who receive a scholarship to continue higher education afterhaving worked in a poor community for at least two years. When they start, theyreceive two months of intensive training followed by in-service pedagogical sup-port and supervision during the two years. A full range of teaching materials,guidelines for planning their teaching activities, teaching manuals, textbooks, andreference materials support their work. At the end of the two-year service, theyreceive a scholarship for up to five years to pursue a higher education degree. Inaddition, they may also remain with the program as tutors or supervisors of newteachers.

* Community participation was identified as another key factor. The successfulinvolvement of the community in the day-to-day running of the preschools andprimary schools is an important element of the CONAFE program. Differentinterest groups involved in the program, such as parents, local authorities, healthpromoters, teachers, and the communities, all show interest, commitment, andpride in the program. This level of community support is critical to sustain theschools. It was noted, however, that community participation is a two-wayprocess: only when schools are encouraging community participation do parentsand families develop the willingness to participate in school activities. In mostAfrican countries, the prevailing model is formal preschool education, whichdoes not encourage parent participation in schools.

* Decentralization and the integration of ECD and community schools at the locallevel were other features leading to success that the participants identified. One

Capacity Building 79

of the big challenges in Africa is to integrate community-driven programs intomainstream education initiatives. This requires efforts from different levels foreffective collaboration. In Mexico, for example, the support given by the Min-istry of Education to CONAFE combined with a decentralized managementstructure allows the state to reach out effectively to very remote areas.

* Flexibility and demand-responsiveness are demonstrated in the programsthrough CONAFE's multilevel teaching approach. Preschool students three to sixyears old are sharing one classroom. Primary schools apply the same model,instructing children 6-12-year-olds of three different educational levels in oneclass. These classroom settings present a particular challenge to the young teach-ers, who work with a curriculum that responds simultaneously to the education-al needs of students of three different learning levels. All students work on thesame topic, but the students proceed at their own learning pace, responding totheir educational level. It was demonstrated that the multigrade classrooms canoffer high-quality teaching and a very beneficial learning environment.

* Integration of health, nutrition, and education services leads to an ECD approachthat fosters the integral development of the child. Participants noted that thisintegration of services, which requires a high level of cooperation between dif-ferent community agents, is extremely beneficial to families and facilitates theteaching of relevant life skills from an early age.

* Suggestions for improvement included a stronger involvement of fathers andyoung men in the programs, the integration of adolescent women in the parenteducation programs, and involvement of parents in literacy programs.

The study tour presented a unique opportunity for information exchange in theframework of South-South collaboration for the improvement of ECD programsand related activities. To capture this experience, a video has been produced docu-menting the main lessons learned. The video, Early Childhood Development: TheCONAFE Example. Video of the World Bank Study Tour for Francophone AfricanDelegations, Oaxaca, March 2000, is available in English and French and can beobtained from:

Adriana Jaramillo, The World Bank, 1818 H Street, NW, Washington, DC 20433, USA,Phone: 1-202-473-1084, e-mail: [email protected].


International ECD Institutes and Conferences

To promote ECD capacity building and networking

To promote interactive learning for ECD program and policy development inAfrica

To promote African leadership and information sharing in support of the well-being of African children

To identify and build on strengths in African ECD, showcasing exemplary prac-tice and innovation

Sites:2002: International ECD Conference, Asmara, Eritrea (planned)2001: International ECD Conference, Dakar Senegal (planned)2000: International ECD Conference, World Bank, Washington, D.C.1999: International ECD Conference, Kampala, Uganda1998: Regional Institute, Banjul, The Gambia1997: Regional Institute, Windhoek, Namibia1995: International Institute, Victoria, B.C., Canada1994: Conference and Institute, Victoria, B.C., Canada

To help develop and sustain African leadership capacity for ECD policy and pro-gram development, a series of regional training seminars and conferences were ini-tiated to bring together key organizations and professionals working in the sector.This has promoted synergy across initiatives and encouraged a shared vision andlearning culture while preserving sensitivity to regional and local contexts in under-taking innovations in African ECD. Importantly, the process has provided countrieswith grounded expertise through peer review and technical assistance. Africans helpfellow Africans build on existing strengths and networks, reinforcing and extendinginvestments in ECD.

Initiated in conjunction with a 1994 International Child, Youth, and Family Con-ference held at the University of Victoria, Canada, the four ECD Institutes (alsoreferred to as seminars or summer schools) brought together ECD leaders fromacross Africa for periods of two to three weeks to interact with each other and withinternational ECD experts to more effectively plan and promote ECD policy andprogram options for their countries. From the first event in 1994, participants haverecommended that the ECD Institutes become part of an ongoing structure thatwould allow them to create a continuing "community of learners and leaders" com-mitted to promoting children's well-being in Africa. Toward that end, regional insti-tutes were held in Africa in 1997 and 1998, and an Africa-wide ECD conferencewas mounted in 1999.

UNICEF, in cooperation with the University of Victoria, was the lead agency inpromoting the ECD institutes. The 1995 institute covered a broad range of topics


to identify potential content for a graduate-level ECD program. It was designed toprovide a training and sharing opportunity for ECD trainers and senior-level pro-gram officers from around the world. After the participants' recommendation thatthe international institutes be augmented with regional training, a first African ECDinstitute was held in Namibia in 1997, jointly organized by the University ofNamibia and the University of Victoria, Canada. The Namibian institute was fullysubscribed with more than two dozen students from 11 African countries. The firstweek of the institute focused on background issues of planning frameworks andchild development from an African perspective, and the final two weeks were devot-ed to developing integrated programming for each participating country.

The Namibia institute was followed by a similar activity in The Gambia in 1998,for which UNICEF and the World Bank contributed core funding and technicalassistance. The Gambia institute drew some three dozen government, NGO, andUNICEF personnel from 12 West and Central African countries and was hosted bythe government of The Gambia through its Department of State for Education. Itwas organized by the ECD Network for Africa (ECDNA) in collaboration with stafffrom C6te d'Ivoire and The Gambia. At both the Namibia and The Gambia insti-tutes, many ECD partners provided funds to support their own staff in attending thetraining. Training focused on multisectoral, integrated approaches to ECD. Empha-sis was placed on defining policies and legal frameworks and on analyzing mecha-nisms that would be effective at both the central and decentralized levels, includingpartnerships with communities, NGOs, and the private sector.

In 1999, the Uganda government and the World Bank initiated a request toexplore a third African Regional ECD Training Institute, to be held in Uganda. Afterconsultation, the decision was made to create a two-tier structure of training: a rea-sonably large, 130-150-person, Africa-wide ECD conference, followed by a Ugan-da-focused training workshop specific to Uganda's program needs for implementinga nationwide ECD project.

In the same way that the ECD institute series had been made possible throughbroad interorganizational and intersectoral support, the Kampala conference askedECD partners to cooperatively plan and facilitate this next major step: the firstlarge-scale international ECD conference to take place in and focus on Africa. ThePlanning Committee included representatives from government ministries, theWorld Bank, UNICEF, the Bernard van Leer Foundation, the Aga Khan Foundation,Save the Children Fund, ECDNA, Makerere University, the University of Victoria,and others. These partners participated in a decentralized organizational process,contacting those programs with which they were associated. Typically, the partnerorganization also covered the expenses for those programs' participation in the con-ference, contributing to sharing the "core" costs covered by the World Bank.

Under the conference theme "Innovations in Early Childhood Care and Devel-opment in Africa," the conference showcased a broad variety of creative and inno-vative approaches to ECD across the Africa Region. Drawing from the list of organ-izations that had long supported the attendance of their own people at earlier insti-tutes and that were themselves involved in ECD program development throughoutAfrica, more than 170 delegates from 19 African countries attended the event, rep-


resenting governmental and nongovernmental agencies, the private sector, and part-ner organizations. Session titles included "Advocacy for Children in Uganda,""Madrasa Programs in East Africa," "Innovative ECD in Nigeria," "Building NGOECD Capacity in Burkina Faso," "ECD Development in Ethiopia," "ECD Innova-tions in Mauritius," "The Pillars of South African ECD Policy-Building on Chil-dren's Rights," and "Innovations in ECD Training in Kenya."

Good practice in program development and management were key features of theconference, with the purpose of learning from African experiences. The presenta-tions and discussions were characterized by enthusiasm, energy, and a commitmentto networking and sharing. To help meet the increasing demand for information onECD programs in Africa and beyond, the conference also featured new technologiesof knowledge dissemination, including the CD-ROM "Early Childhood Counts,"the ECD Virtual University initiative, and accessing and creating resources on theInternet. These were introduced as important tools for training, information shar-ing, and program development.

The Uganda ECD training workshop followed the one-week international con-ference and built on aspects of the work presented the first week. The major focusof the seminar was support of local and regional NGOs in Uganda to carry forwardthe goals of the Nutrition and Early Childhood Development Project (NECDP) tothe local level.

Building on this series of events, the World Bank has confirmed its commitmentto supporting other African governments in hosting future international ECD con-ferences. As governments increasingly seek investment in ECD, the internationalconferences provide an important source of information and inspiration about poli-cies, procedures, and practices, as well as an opportunity for countries to calibratetheir experiences against good practice. It has become apparent that, as countriesmove further into program implementation, their ECD leadership has professionaldevelopment needs that cannot be met through one-off workshops of one or twoweeks' duration, but must be complemented by longer-term efforts for building in-country capacity. The ECD Virtual University and the IMPACT project, describedin the following section, are responses to those needs.

A Summary Report of the Kampala Conference, including brief biographic state-ments and contact points, is available at [email protected].


Leadership Development: ECD Virtual University

To deliver an accredited master's degree program in ECD using new technologiesand face-to-face seminar formats

To strengthen regional capacity to plan, implement, and evaluate ECD in selectedAfrican countries

To enhance ECD leadership and networking in Africa

To link African ECD leaders with each other and with international experts topromote communication, idea sharing, and capacity building in Africa

To encourage and demonstrate the use of new technologies in promoting ECD inAfrica

Status Active

Duration 2000-development2001-07 - two deliveries

Cost US$0.28 million-developmentUS$1.9 million-two deliveries

Funding Norwegian government (development);Norwegian government, the World Bank, andother partners (two deliveries)

Target population African ECD professionals and future leaders

Partner agencies U.N. agencies, international foundations,national governments, ECD NGOs, employersof participants, ECDNA, African educationalinstitutions, the African Virtual University, andthe Global Development Learning Network ofthe World Bank

Project Coordination: University of Victoria,B.C., Canada (Program Director: Dr. Alan Pence)

World Bank project manager Marito Garcia, Lead Economist (AFTH1)

Concern about children's early development is perhaps nowhere greater than inAfrica, yet many countries have only limited means to respond even to young chil-dren's very basic needs. In each African country the World Bank has engaged inECD discussions, the need for building creative and committed leadership in thisfield has been cited. Indeed, ECD projects in Africa cannot move forward success-fully without significant capacity building, training, and leadership development.

Building on the strengths and the experiences of the various ECD institutes andthe Kampala International ECD Conference, the ECD Virtual University (ECDVU)offers a master's degree in ECD, allowing African course participants to study withinternationally recognized instructors without having to leave their jobs or homes.By combining face-to-face seminars and on-the-job application of learning with


web-based and video-conferencing technologies, the ECDWU offers participatingstudents a unique experience of educational support to help ensure the future well-being of children in Africa. This leadership cohort and affiliated organizations willhelp ensure that investments in early childhood programs in Africa will have a fargreater potential for success and sustainability.

The ECDVU builds on successful experiences over a number of years in creatinglearning environments that understand children and families holistically, appreciatethe necessity for intersectoral collaboration, and promote community and familyinvolvement in program development and delivery. This is essential in achievingchild well-being and sustainable program development. The approach encouragespartnerships among institutions, governments, employers, NGOs, and learners andteachers. As the World Bank continues to increase its support for ECD initiatives(estimated at more than US$1.40 billion globally since 1990), partnerships toachieve intersectoral collaboration and holistic programming become ever moreessential.

At the core of the ECDVU is an initial cohort of 30 committed professionals fromacross Africa selected by a country-based ECD committee. Although all students(usually three or four per country and representing different sectors) will be contin-ually engaged with the ECDVU faculty and other course members, they will alsofacilitate the interaction of ECD country-based networks with the ideas shared andgenerated through the program. Typically, all course assignments (and final researchprojects) will relate to the information and developmental needs of ECD in the par-ticipants' home countries while also making major contributions to the evolution ofAfrican ECD literature.

The ECDV will include:

* Web-based learning. Computer courses will account for approximately 60 per-cent of the students' coursework.

* Teleconferencing. Participants will receive approximately 5 percent of theirinstruction via televideo interactions with authorities from different parts ofthe world. These broadcasts can also include larger country-based audiences.

* Face-to-face seminars. International seminars of 12 to 15 days will account forapproximately 35 percent of content covered and will bring participants intodirect contact with each other, with faculty, and with special guest presenters.

The IMPACT project has a synergistic relationship with the ECDVU, and both proj-ects can be seen as keystone elements for other ECD capacity-building activities inAfrica. To a significant degree, the ECDVU course participants will be importantadvocates, users, and creators of the IMPACT country-level ECD knowledge bases.They will also play a key role in ensuring that other forms of web-based informa-tion are channeled into rural and outlying areas in their countries. Similarly, futureECD African conferences and institutes will benefit greatly from the expertise, lead-ership, and networking ability found in the ECDVU. Through cohort contacts withlocal universities and training colleges, it is anticipated that ECD training and pro-gram capacity will increase within those institutions.


ECDVU STRUCTURE For a Master's Degree in ECD

ECD INSTITUTES * Four, 12-15-day seminars will be held during the three-year duration of the program.(6 credits -1.5 The seminars will be held in different regions of Africa and will feature componentscredits each) of the core courses as well as additional ECD topics.

CORE COURSES * Effective Leadership in ECD:(12 credits -1.5 Case Studies and Current Literature

credits each) * The Past, Present, and Future of ECD:Constructions of Children, Families, Programs, and Communities

* Child Development in Context:Appreciating the Holistic Child

* Program Development in a Community Development Context* ECD in the Majority World:

Current Directions in U.N., NGO, Funders, and Related ECD Organizations* Research in ECD: Quantitative Approaches* Research in ECD: Qualitative Approaches* Directed Studies in ECD (preparatory for thesis proposal development)

THESIS OR MAJOR PROJECT Typically, a local university faculty member will join an ECDVU faculty member on(4.5 credits) the student's supervisory committee.

Source: World Bank. 2000. Early Childhood Development Capacity Building in Africa: Introducing the Early ChildhoodDevelopment Virtual University (ECDVU)-An ECD Leadership Initiative. Washington, D.C.: World Bank.

February 2001

Contacts:Dr. Alan Pence, School of Child and Youth Care, P.O. Box 1700, Victoria, B.C., V8W 2Y2Phone: 1-250-721-7981, Fax: 1-250-721.8977, e-mail: [email protected].

Marito Garcia, World Bank, 1818 H Street, NW, Washington DC 20433, USA,Phone: 1-202-473-5385, e-mail: [email protected] site: http://www.ecdvu.org.


Information Technology

IMPACT-Information Management Project for Action,Communications, and Training

To strengthen and increase local capacity to collect, maintain, and use ECD datafor program planning, decisionmaking, and advocacy across Africa

To support ECD programs at different levels with information systems asplanning and monitoring tools

To create country-level ECD knowledge bases and web sites in 10 to 15 Africancountries

To create National ECD Information Resource and Training Centers with theability to collect, manage, and disseminate information on ECD and to conductECD training courses

To use electronic resources to track and develop programs for especiallyvulnerable children, such as orphans and children affected by HIV/AIDS

Status Active

Duration 2000-02

Cost US$800,000-900,000 (total)(US$60,000-70,000 per country)

Funding Year 1: Norwegian and Dutchgovernments/World Bank (US$0.38 million start-up funds for 6 to 8 countries).Participating countries will assemble their ownresources and will seek co-funding at the countrylevel (about 50 percent of total project costs)

Target population African ECD policymakers, program managers,and practitioners of government and nongovern-mental agencies that plan and deliver services forchildren of pre-primary school age; emphasis ondata collection on children in difficult circum-stances (e.g., HIV/AIDS orphans)

Partner agencies U.N. agencies, international foundations, nation-al and local government and nongovernmentalECD agencies, ECDNAProject implementation: Centre de Ressourcepour l'Emergence Sociale Participative (CRESP),Senegal (Program Director: Dr. Marian Zeitlin)

World Bank project manager Susan Opper, Senior Education Specialist(AFTH4)


In light of the growing demand for ECD programs throughout Africa, governments,the World Bank, multilateral donors, and local ECD agencies have joined togetherto develop an Africa-wide ECD knowledge base documenting the situation of chil-dren ages zero to eight years. Although decisionmakers need accurate informationto design effective and targeted large-scale ECD programs, and implementers needbasic data to monitor services in the field, many government and nongovernmentalagencies in Africa lack the technology and skills to gather, organize, and use therequired baseline data.

Over three years, the Information Management Project for Action, Communica-tions, and Training (IMPACT) supports the creation of national informationresource and training centers with electronic knowledge and databases related toECD in 10 to 15 African countries. The resource centers manage national ECD websites presenting information on policies, research, statistics, programs, and services.These databases and the ongoing training in data use that the resource centers pro-vide will strengthen and increase local capacity to use ECD data for decisionmak-ing, planning, and advocacy and will, in addition, support ECD programs at differ-ent levels with information systems as strategic planning and monitoring tools. Theproject will help African governments and nongovernmental ECD agencies to cre-ate and maintain an electronic record of policies, programs, services, and researchrelated to the situation of pre-primary school-age children.

In each participating country, the project brings together local technicians andECD experts for a series of training sessions and workshops during which the data-bases are created. African ECD specialists support these resource centers, databas-es, and web sites, taking into account all relevant issues of access, confidentiality,attribution, and intellectual property. Special attention is given to document localknowledge on care-giving and child-rearing practices, the situation of children invulnerable circumstances such as children affected by HIV/AIDS, AIDS and conflict-related orphans, and children with special needs. This information will provide asolid basis for ECD advocacy, policy formation, program design, and training.

The program and training activities are designed to be inclusive of all ECD stake-holders at different levels who are delivering health, nutrition, education, and socialservices to improve the condition of young children, targeting especially those invulnerable circumstances. The "product," an ECD electronic MIS in the form ofweb pages for easy data access, is disseminated to a wider group of ECD stake-holders and NGOs for ECD program development and training purposes first andforemost in the respective countries. The project also pursues wider regional andinternational dissemination of the knowledge base via country web sites to facilitateinformation sharing and peer support across the Africa Region.

As it builds skills, both centrally and locally, to manage information and planECD programs, the IMPACT project also builds local capacity to initiate and imple-ment such programs. It provides an electronic forum where all Africans interestedin ECD can meet and exchange information. Dedicated web sites allow ECD agen-cies and those in the private sector to develop and disseminate their own resourcesand give program managers, communities, and caregivers access to relevant infor-mation. IMPACT supports in-country training, technical assistance, and ongoingprofessional advice.


The IMPACT initiative uniquely links local capacity building and training withinformation management and ECD planning and programming. The added value ofthe series of training activities is that they also provide a cross-cutting forum with-in countries and eventually across the Africa Region for discussions, networking,and ECD program coordination, underpinning the multisectoral nature of ECD pro-grams. The project builds sustainable capacity in that ECD agencies, in collabora-tion with the private sector, assemble their own resources and groups of sponsorsfor creation and maintenance of the knowledge bases and web sites. With very fewexceptions, project funding will be used for in-country training, technical assistance,and ongoing professional advice only.

Further information on this project is available at the World Bank's ECD web siteat http://www.worldbank.org/children/africa. This site includes information on ECDpolicymaking, case studies, HIV/AIDS, ECD in post-conflict situations, links toagencies sponsoring ECD projects in Africa, and the different country-level ECDinformation created through IMPACT.

PROPOSED STRATEGY

ECD KNOWLEDGE BASES * Create country-level ECD electronic knowledge bases for four or five African countriesAND BASELINE DATA per project year with data on:

- The condition of young children (health and nutrition status, family situation,children in difficult circumstances)

- ECD policies- Private and public services available to children- Descriptions of ECD projects and programs- In-country and external ECD agencies.

- Create a comprehensive ECD knowledge base for each country, which can be integrat-ed into an online profile of ECD throughout Africa.

INFORMATION * Conduct a four-week technical training for national delegates to create the initialMANAGEMENTTRAINING database and in-country training capacity to train program managers on how toAND CAPACITY BUILDING interpret ECD information for advocacy, ECD program development, implementation,

and monitoring.* Provide software installation and staff training for production and maintenance of a

national-level ECD knowledge base.* Set up National ECD Information Resource and Training Centers with the ability to

collect, manage, and disseminate information on ECD and to conduct ECD trainingcourses.

* Introduce new ECD training programs and materials by CD-ROM and onlineresources.

* Support coordination with other Internet training programs such as the ECDVU.

ECD WEB SITE * Create each country's introductory ECD web page by using an adapted manualDEVELOPMENT from international materials.

* Promote this site as an electronic forum for networking, research, and discussion.* Create, in collaboration with the private sector, a national page of childcare advice for

parents and caregivers.* Provide technical assistance and continued support to help countries maintain and use

their created knowledge base.


ECD WEB SITE * Provide ongoing assistance for:DEVELOPMENT - Management of information systems

(continued) - Additional training in database development and use of online training materials- ECD studies, baseline surveys, data collection, and analysis as well as policy inter-

pretation and application to programs (in collaboration and coordination with coun-try-based researchers and the ECDVU program).

* Provide links from the ECD web site to the ECDVU and other institutions of higherlearning, training, and research.

NETWORKING * Support a forum for networking between ECD agencies and stakeholders withinand among African countries

Source: World Bank, February 2000. IMPACT-Project Description and Action Plan.

April 2001

Contact:Dr. Marian Zeitlin, Centre de Ressources pour l'Emergence Sociale Participative (CRESP), ONG, B.P. 8873, Dakar-Yoff,Senegal, Phone : 221-820-9200, e-mail: [email protected].

Susan Opper, The World Bank, 1818 H Street, NW, Washington, DC 20433, USA, Phone: 1-202-473-9332,e-mail: [email protected] site: http://www.cresp.sn/impactcentral/; http://www.worldbank.org/children/africa/index/html.


Information Systems Strategy Plan (ISSP)

The Eritrea Early Child Development Project is introducing an innovative feature inthe field of information and communication technologies (ICT) and knowledgemanagement to support project activities at different levels. With a regional Infor-mation Systems Strategy Plan (ISSP), it undertakes to capture and disseminateindigenous knowledge. As part of this initiative, it proposes to set up a frameworkfor the identification, collection, and dissemination of indigenous knowledge onissues relating to ECD. The addition of the indigenous knowledge component isexpected to enhance the culture of knowledge sharing and add a unique feature tothe in-country knowledge repository created through IMPACT. For the Fiscal Year2001, the project has been awarded US$20,000 from the Africa Region OperationalQuality and Knowledge (AFTQK) as seed money.

As one of the first steps toward the collection, processing, storage, and dissemi-nation of information and knowledge, the Eritrea ECD project is developing an inte-grated strategic systems plan that will define the long-term information require-ments; recommend a framework and architecture for collecting, processing, and dis-seminating information and knowledge; and prepare a long-term system implemen-tation plan. The ISSP will become the guiding document that investigates businessrequirements for the Eritrea ECD delivery and services sector and addresses theinformation technology architecture, hardware, software, and connectivity issuespertinent to ECD delivery and services in the short and long term. It will build thefoundation upon which Eritrea's ECD information systems will develop in an inte-grated, orderly manner to support key sectoral and institutional priorities.

The expected outputs from this effort are:

* Creation of an information and knowledge-sharing model for ECD projectsthat can be used in similar projects in the Africa Region

* A framework along with requisite policies for the identification, collection,storage, and dissemination of indigenous knowledge related to ECD activities

* Production of an integrated systems strategy plan and manual

* Advice on and enhancement of tools for monitoring and evaluation for ECDprograms

* Guidance on the design and development of an integrated information archi-tecture

* Fostering of a knowledge-sharing culture among all ECD actors and ministries

* Workshop on knowledge sharing and information access and advantages

* Integration of information from IMPACT and other regional and institutionalinformation sources

* Production of a "good practice" example on mainstreaming knowledge inECD initiatives.

The ISSP will be developed based on a long-term information technology strategystudy to identify the medium-term and long-term information needs of the Eritrea


ECD project and to establish a technical set of standards that all proposed solutionsmust adhere to. The study will:

* Address the technical issues of wide-area networking in light of the communi-cation needs.

* Consider the use of intranet technologies to develop a plan of action ensuringcompatibility of various electronic systems.

* Examine the development and maintenance of links with partner agencies.

* Establish an efficient information and document system using computer net-working facilities. Assess the current situation of the ECD project's informa-tion systems (in all associated ministries and agencies, in Asmara and in theregions), including hardware and software use, organization, resources, staffskills, training requirements, status of current application systems, and ongo-ing development activities.

• Diagnose data and information necessary to carry out the major functionalprocesses of the ECD project and related institutions and agencies.

• Formulate (or revise) major information system policies on matters such asresponsibility for data administration, budgeting and accounting principles forinformation resources, responsibilities of functional managers and data-pro-cessing department, and security standards for data and systems.

* Design a system architecture that defines standards for databases, informationflows, and information systems; a technology and networking architecture thatguides future procurement, maintenance, and operation; and a standard set ofcore applications for common business functions.

* Help to prepare detailed plans for technology acquisition, system development,staff training, and system deployment with the respective investment and oper-ating cost estimates for information systems during a five-year period.

The result will be a draft action plan for the implementation of the information tech-nology strategy and a systems implementation plan that will specify the precedenceof activities, the cost, the project management arrangements, the project milestones,and the proposed indicators of completion of all system development activities. Theentire process will be guided by an information systems committee of the EritreaECD project and associated agencies that will be responsible for the sponsorship,supervision, and approval of the ISSP. This committee will be formed with seniorstaff from all user departments of the respective agencies to provide input and tosponsor and monitor the ISSP.

Contact: Krishna Pidatala, The World Bank, 1818 H Street, NW, Washington, DC 20433, USA,Phone: 1-202-473-7353, e-mail: [email protected].

References

ACC/SCN. 2000. Fourth Report on the World Nutrition Situation. Nutrition Throughoutthe Life Cycle. Geneva: United Nations Administrative Committee on Coordination, Sub-Committee on Nutrition in collaboration with the International Food Policy ResearchInstitute.

Ayieko, M.A, 1998. "From Single Parent to Child-Headed Households-the Case of Chil-dren Orphaned by AIDS in Kisumu and Siaya Districts." Series: Study paper 7. New York:United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

Biersteker, L. 1997. An Assessment of Programmes and Strategies for 0-4 Year Olds.Capetown: Early Learning Resource Center.

Colletta, N., J. Balachander, and X. Liang. 1996. The Condition of Young Children in Sub-Saharan Africa. Washington, D.C.: World Bank.

Colletta, N., and A. J. Reinhold. 1997. Review of Early Childhood Policies and Programsin Sub-Saharan Africa. Washington, D.C.: World Bank.

International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). 1994. Children and War. Geneva: ICRC.

Lorey, M., ed. 2000. Orphan Alert: International Perspectives on Children Left Behind byHIV/AIDS. Lutry, Switzerland: Association Francois-Xavier Bagnoud.

Machel, G. 2000. The Impact of Armed Conflict on Children. A Critical Review of ProgressMade and Obstacles Encountered in Increasing Protection for War-Affected Children.International Conference on War-Affected Children, September 10-17, 2000. Winnipeg:Canadian International Development Agency.

O'Gara, C., S. Huffmann, and D. Lusk. 2000. Assessment and Improvement of Care forAIDS-Affected Children under Age 5. Ready to Learn. Washington, D.C.: Academy forEducational Development.

Opper, S., and K. Hauge Storholt. 2000. "An Overview of the Impact of Violent Conflict onYoung Children and a Strategy for World Bank Intervention." Internal Report. WorldBank, Washington, D.C.

Otunnu, 0. 1998. Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Children-Protection of Chil-dren Affected by Armed Conflict. Special Representative of the Secretary-General forChildren and Armed Conflict. New York: United Nations.

Schweinhart, L.J., H.V. Barnes, and D.P. Weikhart, with W. Steven Barnett and Ann S.Epstein. 1993. Significant Benefits: The High/Scope Perry Preschool Study through Age27. Monographs of the High/Scope Educational Research Foundation, No. 10. Ypsilanti,Mich.: High/Scope Educational Research Foundation.

Sen, A.K. 1999. Keynote speech presented at the Inter-American Development Bank seminaron "Breaking the Poverty Cycle: Investing in Early Childhood," Paris, France, March 14,1999.

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Subbarao, K., A. Mattimore, and K. Plangemann. 2001. Africa's Orphans and VulnerableChildren: Issues and Good Practice Program Options. The World Bank Africa RegionHuman Development Department Working Paper Series (forthcoming). Washington,D.C.: World Bank.

Thurman, S. 2000. "Children in a World with AIDS Initiative." UNAIDS and UNICEF Fact-sheet. Congressional briefing by Head of the White House Office on AIDS Policy, Sep-tember 12, 2000.

UNAIDS. 2000. Report on the Global HIV/AIDS Epidemic, June 2000. Geneva: UNAIDS.

UNAIDS. 1999. "Mother-to-Child Transmission (MTCT) of HIV. Questions and Answers."Background Briefing, August 1999. UNAIDS, Geneva.

UNAIDS and WHO. 1998. HIV/AIDS Report on the Global Epidemic. Geneva: UNAIDS.

UNICEF. 1996. The State of the World's Children. New York: UNICEF.

World Bank. 1999. World Development Indicators. Washington, D.C.: World Bank.

World Bank. 1998. An Analysis of Early Childhood Development-Daycare and HomeCare Programs: Quality, Cost and Accreditation. (7 vol.) Washington, D.C.: World Bank.

Van der Gaag, J., and J.P. Tan. 1998. The Benefits of Early Child Development Programs:An Economic Analysis. Washington, D.C.: World Bank.

Young, M.E., ed. 1997. Early Child Development: Investing in Our Children's Future. Inter-national Congress Series No. 1137. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science B.V.

Publications and Other Resources

Evans, J.L., R.G. Myers, and E.M. Ilfeld. 2000. Early Childhood Counts. A ProgrammingGuide on Early Childhood Care for Development. Washington, D.C.: World Bank.(handbook and CD-ROM)

Jaramillo, A., and K. Tietjen. 2001. Early Childhood Development in Africa: Can We DoMore and Better for Less? A Look at the Impact and Implications of Preschools in CapeVerde and Guinea. The World Bank Africa Region Human Development Series. Wash-ington, D.C.: World Bank.

Lokshin, M., E. Glinskaya, and M. Garcia. 2000. "The Effect of Early Childhood Devel-opment Programs on Women's Labor Force Participation and Older Children's School-ing in Kenya." World Bank Policy Research Working Paper No. 2376. DECRG, PREM,and AFTHD. World Bank, Washington, D.C.

Uganda Nutrition and Early Childhood Development Project, Ministry of Health. 2001.Promoting Good Caring Practices for Our Children. Helping Uganda's Children AchieveTheir Full Potentials. A Participatory Planning Manual for the Uganda Nutrition andEarly Childhood Development Project. Book 1-4.

World Bank. 2000. Early Childhood Development: The CONAFE Example. Video of theWorld Bank Study Tour for Francophone African Delegations, Oaxaca, March 2000.

World Bank. 2000. Showcasing Early Childhood Care and Development Innovation andApplication in Africa. International Conference on Early Childhood Care and Develop-ment (ECCD). Summary Report. Uganda International Conference Centre, Kampala,Uganda, September 6-10, 1999. Washington, D.C.: World Bank.

World Bank. 2000. Showcasing Early Childhood Care and Development Innovation andApplication in Africa. Vol. II-Conference Papers. Uganda International Conference Cen-tre, Kampala, Uganda, September 6-10, 1999. Washington, D.C.: World Bank.

World Bank. 2000. Early Childhood Development Capacity Building in Africa: Introducingthe Early Childhood Development Virtual University (ECDVU)-An ECD LeadershipInitiative. Washington, D.C.: World Bank.

Young, M.E., ed. 2001. From Early Child Development to Human Development. Interna-tional Congress Series (forthcoming). Amsterdam: Elsevier Science B.V.

http://www.worldbank.org/children/africa/index.html.

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