Sustainable and scalable model of early childhood care & education for Kenya’s urban slums

Organization:

Country of Implementation:

Kenya

Rural/Urban:

Urban & Peri-Urban

Target Beneficiary:

0-2 years

Delivery Intermediaries:

Lady Healthcare Worker/Community Healthcare Worker; Caregiver; Non-Medical Professionals; Non-specialists

Objective:

Improve the quality of early childhood care and education in East Africa’s urban slums.

Innovation Description:

Build best-practice ECD centers and partner with local baby-care micro-franchises to provide high-quality, community-based childcare.

Stage of Innovation:

Proof of Concept

Sustainable and scalable model of early childhood care & education for Kenya’s urban slums

Organization

Kidogo Early Years

Rural/Urban

Urban & Peri-Urban

Target Beneficiary

0-2 years

Delivery Intermediaries

Lady Healthcare Worker/Community Healthcare Worker; Caregiver; Non-Medical Professionals; Non-specialists

Objective

Improve the quality of early childhood care and education in East Africa’s urban slums.

Innovation Description

Build best-practice ECD centers and partner with local baby-care micro-franchises to provide high-quality, community-based childcare.

Stage of Innovation

Proof of Concept

Innovation Summary

0578 Kidogo - lrg.clear.3DIn Sub-Saharan Africa, only 12% of children have access to early childhood programs. [1] For children living in infrastructure-poor slums facing extreme poverty, access to early childhood care is virtually non-existent. Some enterprising local mothers (dubbed “mamapreneurs”) offer informal, home-based daycare services for a nominal fee in local “baby-care centers”. This represents an improvement for many families, where the alternative is to leave their children at home alone, or with an older sibling who is pulled out of school. However, the physical environment of these informal baby-care centers is often poor, with no lighting, limited ventilation, indoor air pollution from cooking, and facilities that are often unclean and unsafe. In addition, given the lack of training and awareness about the importance of ECD, the caregivers often leave the children on the hard ground for long periods of time without appropriate attention or stimulation.

Kidogo is a social enterprise that seeks to transform the trajectory of young children living in East Africa’s urban slums by providing high-quality, affordable, early childhood care and education through an innovative “hub and spoke” model.

Kidogo builds and operates best-practice community ECD “hubs,” which provide young children (6 months to 6 years) with a holistic ECD intervention including a safe & stimulating physical environment, nutritious meals, a play-based curriculum and well-trained, supportive caregivers. In addition, Kidogo partners with local baby-care centers (“spokes”) through a micro-franchising model, providing training, materials & ongoing support to improve the quality of community-based childcare.

Impact

  • 2 “hubs” (best-practice community day care centres) and between 5-10 “spokes” (micro-franchises) will be established.
  • 200 children will attend a Kidogo “hub” or “spoke”.
  • 22 local staff will be hired to work at the “hubs” and ”spokes” centres.

Early childhood education is one of the most cost-effective ways to improve the quality of life for rural as well as urban populations.
-- His Highness the Aga Khan

Innovation

Kidogo’s activities target the 2.5 million pre-primary school children between the ages of 0-6 years living in East Africa’s urban slums that do not have access to adequate early childhood care & education. A majority of these children suffer from malnutrition, stunting, neglect, daily exposure to safety hazards  and lack of positive and consistent social interactions.

Over the next two years, Kidogo will establish 2 corporate-owned early childhood development centers (“hubs”) and between 5-10 micro-franchised centers (“spokes”) in three Kenyan slums. Each centre will provide adequate nutrition, education and care at a nominal fee (less than $1 per day) for approximately 30-50 young children between the ages of 6 months to 6 years.

Kidogo’s operating model consists of the following:

  1. Facility retrofitting:
    Locate and re-furbish existing properties in urban slums into child-friendly spaces.
  2. Caregiver training:
    Recruit and train local women on the principles of early childhood development.
  3. Customized curriculum:
    Develop high-quality classroom material designed for low-resource settings.

During this proof-of-concept phase, Kidogo will test its model, curriculum and micro-franchising “business-in-a-box” as well as evaluate its impact on children and their families, in preparation for a country-wide scale-up.

Collaboration

Funders

Key Partners

Implementation

Key Drivers

  • Community participation and ownership through the establishment of local advisory councils.
  • Incorporation of local best practice into curriculum and teacher-training.
  • Engaged and motivated caregivers

Continuation

Kidogo is founded on a sustainable, scalable business model. The goal of the program is to reach 50,000 young children within the first 10 years of operations.

Evaluation Methods

The project team and researchers from the Institute for Human Development (Aga Khan University), intend to measure specific outcome indicators in children, including stunting rates (height/weight), disease prevalence (e.g. diarrhea), malnutrition, and motor & language skills.

Initial assessments will be conducted to estimate the cognitive, motor, psycho-social and emotional condition of each child using age-appropriate, culturally-sensitive instruments. Success of the intervention will be deemed by improvements in children’s developmental outcomes (based on baseline assessments), nutritional status and overall well-being. The intent in the long-run is to conduct follow-up studies on primary school completion rates and health status to validate Kidogo’s theory of change.

Kidogo will also evaluate the financial sustainability of its “hub and spoke” model. Each centre will have a thorough financial record-keeping system in place to keep track of incoming revenue and expenditures. In the proof-of-concept phase, monthly financial reports prepared by centre administrators will guide decisions and facilitate cost minimization. In the long-run, Kidogo will develop a mobile phone, SMS-based tracking system to increase reliability and accountability of financial tracking, as well as enable real-time data tracking.

References

  1. Munthali, Alister C. et al. (2014) Early childhood development: the role of community based childcare centres in Malawi. Springerplus. 2014; 3: 305.

Resources

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