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In Malawi, improving child learning meant understanding what does and doesn’t work

The story of Firelight’s grantee-partner COPRED illustrates the power of documenting and sharing what we and our partners are learning

Early childhood development
“These assessments provide us with the evidence of what we are doing well and open our eyes to what we are not doing well. It also helps us to put effort in the right areas and to plan better. We are then able to share these lessons learned with our communities, with local government authorities, as well as with donors, showing how resources have been used effectively and where more resources are needed.”
Reuben Biliati
COPRED

In 2014, Firelight began funding COPRED (Community Partnership for Relief and Development) under our early childhood development initiative. Since 2000, COPRED has implemented community-born development programs in in southern Malawi. Their  approach tackles the root causes of issues such as the rise in HIV infections, poverty, domestic violence, child labor, child marriage and school dropouts – focusing on vulnerable women and young children.

In addition to HIV prevention, food security initiatives, and small-scale enterprise development, COPRED focuses on strengthening early childhood development systems. In Malawi, local communities have already established a network of community-based childcare centers (CBCCs). The challenge lies in ensuring the quality of these CBCCs, which often serve primarily as daycare centers rather than as productive, active learning environments for young children.

We engaged the technical expertise of the Uganda based Madrasa Early Childhood Program to help our CBO grantee-partners improve the quality of care and education at the CBCCs they support. With this funding and capacity building, COPRED has been able to make significant improvements in their CBCCs – training center caregivers in child-centered pedagogy, encouraging parent involvement in their children’s education, and increasing community contributions to locally made teaching and learning materials for the centers.

Systemic change takes time, and Firelight is committed to using in-depth assessments and documentation to ensure that we are gradually seeing improvements and addressing key challenges as they arise.  In both 2016 and 2017, Firelight engaged Dr. Amina Abubakar, an independent academic evaluator, and her team to conduct a baseline and midline assessment, respectively, of CBCCs with which our grantee-partners work.

At Firelight, data is collected for the purpose of helping ourselves and CBOs to better understand where they are performing well and where gaps and challenges are. This information is used as the starting point for discussion and learning, and new ideas are directly fed back into their programs, as well as back to Firelight so we can understand where to offer more support.  

As part of Firelight’s process of sharing data back with partners, COPRED learned that many of their CBCC caregivers did not meet the minimum standards of qualification, as many only had a primary school education. In response, COPRED now systematically evaluates their caregivers’ educational backgrounds and has supported them to re-enroll in secondary education – understanding that strengthening their basic skills in literacy and numeracy allows them to be more effective teachers to young children in the community.

At Firelight, learning from assessments and documentation is used for action – sharing data back with CBO grantee-partners so they can improve their programs and disseminating these lessons to the wider philanthropic and civil society communities in ways they can use, adapt or replicate.

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