The_Effectiveness_Initiative

Early Childhood MattersEarly Childhood Matterst h e b u l l e t i n o f t h e B e r n a r d v a n L e e r F o u n d a t i o n O C T O B E R 1 9 9 9 N O . 9 3

The Effectiveness InitiativeA joint publication with the Consultative Group on Early Childhood Care and DevelopmentCoordinator’s Notebook No 23 1999

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ISSN 1387-9553

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Cover: Namibia: Health Unlimited Project

photo: Paula Nimpuno-Parente

Inside front cover: July 1999

Effectiveness Initiative Workshop, The Hague

photo: Angela Ernst

Back cover: July 1999

Effectiveness Initiative Workshop, The Hague

photo: Jim Smale _____________________________________________________________

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ContentsMapping the contours of effective programming 3

When ECD works – Gerry Salole and Judith L Evans 7

Stories we tell – Ellen Meredith Ilfeld 18

B e r n a r d v a n L e e r Fo u n d a t i o n 3 E a r l y C h i l d h o o d Ma t t e r s

In January 1999, the Bernard van LeerFoundation and partner organisationsin the Consultative Group on EarlyChildhood Care and Development*initiated a three year investigationknown as the Effectiveness Initiative(). Our overall goals within this effortare to discover what we can about whatmakes an effective programme work,and to initiate an international dialogueon effectiveness that deepens ourunderstanding of how to create and/orsupport effective programming foryoung children and families.

To achieve these goals, the set thefollowing objectives:

• to identify ten diverse EarlyChildhood Development ()

programmes that people considereffective (and that have operated forat least ten years) and to explore themin depth;

• to engage people from the chosensites, together with staff frominternational s, to work in cross-site, cross-cultural teams to carry outsuch explorations;

• to learn how to apply qualitativeresearch techniques in theexamination of programmes;

• to create tools that allow us tounderstand the complexity of theseprogramme experiences more fully;

• to stimulate cross-site and inter-agency dialogue about what makes programmes effective, how, andfor whom;

• to understand more fully the

interplay between a programme’sprocesses, activities, and outcomes;and

• to map the contours ofeffectiveness, defining what makesa programme effective, under whatconditions, and for whom; whatsupports and what hinders aproject under particular conditionsand in particular contexts; andwhat these contours tell us abouteffective programming moregenerally.

We called the project theEffectiveness Initiative despite somehesitation. The word ‘effective’ is, wefeel, one of those words that is usedmuch too glibly in the developmentfield, as if we knew exactly what it

Mapping the contours of effective programming:The Effectiveness Initiative 1999-2002

July 1999 Effectiveness Initiative Workshop, The Haguephoto: Angela Ernst

means. As we have already discovered,effectiveness means different things todifferent people and this has played acrucial role in helping keep our mindsopen about what effectiveness is andwhere it resides.

The Effectiveness Initiative is nowunderway. The programmes included inthe represent a diversity of settingsand of approaches to early childhoodprogramming (see page 9). Workingwith each programme is a team of atleast four people – some insiders andsome outsiders – who are selecting andcreating tools appropriate to help themdevelop an understanding of theprogramme. While a commonframework is being explored at each site(generated by the teams from all thesites working together with a 10 person‘Advisory Committee’ of international specialists), teams have alsoestablished what the important localissues are for them, and have devisedtheir own ways of exploring them, thatare unique to their setting.

From the very beginning, we haveconceived of the as an opportunity tolearn more about what makes

B e r n a rd v a n L e e r Fo u n d a t i o n 4 E a r l y C h i l d h o o d Ma t t e r s

The Philippines: ECD at Mount Pinatubophoto: Dr S Anandalakshmy

programmes work in an open andtransparent way, sharing ourassumptions, confusions and findings aswe go along. We begin, therefore, withsome candour: we expect to makemistakes along the way, we expect to besurprised, and we are open to changes ofdirection. We know that we run the riskof asking the wrong questions and we areprepared to share both the excitement ofdiscovery as well as the awkwardness offinding our way. In short, we are at thebeginning of a voyage together.

In this issue of Early Childhood Matterswe are trying two new things: first, weare sharing a process that we arecurrently engaged in, as it is happening.In essence, we are showing you severalpages from our project diary. We areinviting you to peek in on a developingprocess and are hoping that this, in turn,will encourage you to react to andcontribute toward the further formationof the Effectiveness Initiative.

Second, we are presenting this materialin a special edition of Early ChildhoodMatters that is a joint publication withthe Coordinators’ Notebook () of theConsultative Group on Early Childhood

Care and Development. In recognition ofthe collaboration and dialogue built intothe , we have decided to join forces inthis initial publication to reach out toboth the Early Childhood Matters andCoordinators’ Notebook audiences.Regular readers of the will find thelayout and design familiar, regularreaders of the will recognise thelonger, in depth article format that is a tradition. As part of thiscollaboration, Ellen M Ilfeld, Director ofCommunications for the ConsultativeGroup since 1993, was asked to guestedit this issue; and Judith L Evans,former director of the ConsultativeGroup, has moved to The Hague, as ofJanuary 1999, to commit herself full timeto the Effectiveness Initiative as Director.

‘When works: mapping the contoursof effective programming’ (page 7)provides an overview of the EffectivenessInitiative; a discussion of what we hopeto achieve; some of the assumptions weare making as the project gets underway;what has happened so far; and some ofthe surprises we have already had.In ‘Stories we tell, moments that staywith us’ (page 18) we introduce a specificqualitative research technique, which is

designed to get at people’s ownexperience of something that has workedfor them in relation to early childhooddevelopment. We tested this activity withpartners in the Consultative Group onEarly Childhood Care and Developmentwith staff within the Foundation, andwith the programme in Peru.The article presents the results from ourtrial run using qualitative research. Itillustrates what can be generated whenwe open ourselves to different sources,different kinds of data, and differentways of processing them. Each site willdetermine whether this and/or othermethodologies are appropriate to theircontexts, as they find ways of solicitingthe perspectives of the key players:children; parents; care providers;community planners; intervention agentsand others. In future editions of wewill describe our experiences with othertechniques.We welcome your responses,questions and comments. "

Ellen Meredith Ilfeld, Guest EditorJudith L Evans,Director of the Effectiveness InitiativeGerry Salole, Director of PDC Department,Bernard van Leer Foundation

* Organisations that belong to the consortium

include: Aga Khan Foundation; Bernard van Leer

Foundation; Christian Children’s Fund; Save the

Children ; Radda Barnen; High/Scope Foundation;

Academy for Educational Development; Inter-

American Development Bank; World Bank; ;

and . In addition, regional

networks/convenors represented within the

consortium include: Arab countries (Arab Resource

Collective); Latin America (); Caribbean

(Caribbean Child Development Centre); Eastern

Europe (Marta Korintus); Central Asia ();

Southeast Asia (Feny de los Angeles Bautista); South

Asia Network (Caroline Arnold); and Anglophone

Africa (Barnabas Otaala). Visitors at the April 1999

Consultative Group meeting included representatives

from Plan International; Redd Barna; a consultant to

; Ryerson University Toronto; and diverse

staff.

The next edition of Early ChildhoodMatters will focus on participation bychildren 0-7 years in theconceptualisation, implementation andevaluation of programmes.


Zimbabwe: discussions between stakeholdersKushanda Project


In order to examine what makes

programmes work, and morespecifically, what makes them effective,in diverse contexts, for diverseparticipants and stakeholders, theBernard van Leer Foundation haslaunched the Effectiveness Initiative(). This is a three-year exploration

(1999-2002) that we hope will give usgreater understanding of what makesprogrammes work – for the diversepeople who take part in them, and forthe communities and cultures that aremeant to be enriched by them. It is aneffort that will allow us to take aqualitative look at programmes with at

least a ten-year track record that arewidely considered to be effective, and todevelop methods and maps forexamining other programmes in thefuture.

The effort is grounded in the in-depth study of ten specific

programmes. It is also designed to be across-site, cross-agency collaborationand exchange that stimulates ongoingdialogue about effective programming.Furthermore, it is designed to test theapplication of qualitative researchmethods, well tested in otherdevelopment arenas, to the field of

When ECD works:mapping the contours of effective programming

Gerry Salole and Judith L. Evans

When visiting a programme or engaged in an -related activity, we all tend to askourselves whether the situation appears to be ‘working.’ Sometimes the sense of what isworking is an intuitive, overall impression. Sometimes we are consciously checking off

features on a mental priority list we’ve developed through experience. For example:children are: active ✔ clean ✔ well fed ✔ mentally and socially stimulated ✔ …

setting is: full of materials children can explore ✔ safe and well-ventilated ✔ …adults are: engaged with children ✔ encouraging children to use language ✔ …

What signals a sense that a programme is working may be quite different for each of us, and is likely to include a whole range of factors that each of us will define

according to our own professional experience and goals.

international . The goals of thiseffort are two-fold: to gain deeperinsights into what makes

programmes effective, and to activateinternational dialogue on effectivenessthat takes us, as professionals,beyond our present scant measures andindicators of programme success.

For each site, a team of at least fourpeople (some local, some from othersites) will establish the initial site-specific issues to explore, and will set upprocesses for engaging diversestakeholders in mapping the evolution,experiences and details of theprogramme. The teams are supportedby a cross-agency Advisory Committeeof programmers, policy makers andpractitioners from around the world1.The teams and members of theAdvisory Committee met together as awhole group in July, 1999, to identify aset of basic questions and concerns theywish to examine across all ten sites.They will continue to meet periodicallyto share their tools, methods,experiences, questions, concerns, andevolving maps of understanding. Themethods used by each team will be

created or selected from the entire‘toolkit’ of options offered by the richexperience of the talented individualswho are taking part in this effort.

Those of us active within theEffectiveness Initiative do not expect tocome up with a template of what asuccessful or ideal programme musthave. Rather, we are attempting to mapboth programme-specific dimensions ofeffectiveness and to look for patternsthat appear to be true across diversesettings. We want to be true to eachprogramme included in the study, butalso to extrapolate shared patterns andsuperimpose them on each other.

One of the primary objectives of theEffectiveness Initiative is to create a setof methods and data that is muchbroader than, but as persuasive as,current economic analyses of thebenefits of early childhoodprogrammes. There are now dataavailable that demonstrate theeconomic benefits of investment in theearly years. But while the earlychildhood field as a whole has benefitedgreatly from the research that has

generated these data, this should notlimit the search for effective

programmes. Unwittingly,programming planners and policymakers often allow the economic datato limit their imagination whenconsidering programming possibilities.The economic analyses have focused uson a search for economic outcomes andthis narrows understanding of the fullimpact of effective early childhoodprogrammes, on individual children,families and communities.

Furthermore, the current researchfindings have focussed attention oncentre-based preschool programmes,since this is the early childhood strategyoften used as the basis of analysis.Planners have become so susceptible tothis that the potential benefits ofalternatives such as homebased, parentsupport, and community developmentprogrammes have not been explored inany depth. This project is an attempt toget beyond this, and the qualitativeresearch tools being used in the offerus methodologies to complement whathas already been researched usingquantitative techniques.

Thus, within the Effectiveness Initiativewe are asking questions like:

‘What makes a programme effective?’‘What makes it work?’‘What aspects of a programme areworking?’‘What can we learn from programmesthat feel right in one aspect but wrongin another?’‘How does a programme change overtime?’‘Are effective programmes alwayseffective, and for different sets ofstakeholders?’‘Are they effective in the same arenas?’‘Can a programme that is failing tointervene in one dimensionnevertheless be effective in another?’

The Effectiveness Initiative:

getting started

As the was being created,organisations working in the field of were consulted as to whatprogrammes they thought were‘effective.’ The staff at the Bernardvan Leer Foundation began by askingpartners in The Consultative Group on


Early Childhood Care and Development2

and this led us to consult others whowere there. From this consultation morethan forty programmes were identifiedfor consideration. We then contacted theprogrammes and told them about theproject. Where there was initial interestwe took the process a step furtherthrough dialogue with key people in theprogramme. This narrowed the fieldfurther, and when the proposal was sentto the Board of Trustees of the Bernardvan Leer Foundation there were elevenpossible programmes, one of whichsubsequently withdrew.

From January to June 1999, teams oftwo outsiders (one from theFoundation, one from anotherprogramme participating in the )made site visits to each of the tenprogrammes. They met withprogramme staff, explained the conceptand ideas behind the project, andpresented some of the questions thathad arisen so far. There was noblueprint of how to proceed: they werelooking for resonance between the

and the concerns and questions thatwere arising and being articulatedwithin the programmes. As in allnegotiations, there was a need to clarifygoals and objectives.

It took a full day at most sites for thenotions, assumptions and beliefs behindthe Effectiveness Initiative to beunderstood. However, in each case, overthe following two days, the ideas beganto take hold and a real dialogue began.It soon became evident that many ofthe programmes that joined with uswere asking similar questions of theirown work, and they had otherquestions they had been asking. Yet,prior to their involvement in the

there had not been an opportunity tovalidate or explore these questions.

Ultimately, those who joined the

found resonance with what we hadwanted to explore on a wider scale andcould see ways in which the activities ofthe would help them do their work.As a result of the site visits – throughthe dialogue and discussions – the

began to take shape.

Today there are ten programmesinvolved in the Effectiveness Initiative,six of which have received fundingfrom the Bernard van Leer Foundation.They represent geographic diversityand are illustrative of a variety ofapproaches. The programmes includedin the Effectiveness Initiative are listedin the Table.

Programmes included in the Effectiveness Initiative

Country Programme name and description

Kenya Madrasa Resource Centre (MRC)

The MRC provides training and ongoing support to preschools in Kenya, Tanzania and

Uganda that have been created to provide early childhood experiences for Muslim

children within the context of their religion.

Mozambique Assoçiação da Criança Familia e Desenvolvimento (CDF)

This evolved from an effort during the war to reunite children with their families. It

now focuses on a variety of community based activities, one of which is ECD.

India Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA)

SEWA was created to support women in the non-formal sector, organising them into

cooperatives that are self sustaining. Childcare was added as a component to

support women’s work.

Israel ALMAYA – Association for the Advancement of the Ethiopian Family and Child

This programme works with Ethiopian families that have migrated to Israel. It

provides children with experiences that honour their traditional culture and prepares

them to enter primary school.

The Philippines Mount Pinatubo Project

When Mount Pinatubo erupted families living at the base of the mountain were

resettled in other parts of the Philippines. This programme works with the

community as a whole to meet their needs at all levels. A significant activity is home

based playgroups for children and families.

Colombia PROMESA – Proyecto de Mejoramiento Educativo, de Salud y del Ambiente

A community mobilisation project that began 25 years ago in an isolated area of

Colombia. Activities within the programme have now been taken over completely by

the community itself.

Peru PRONOEI – Programa No-formal de Educación Inicial

This started out as a nutrition programme 25 years ago in the Altiplano of Peru and

evolved into a community-run preschool programme. It then became a model for

non-formal education that was adopted by government and was also disseminated

widely throughout Latin America and beyond.

The Netherlands Samenspel

This programme provides a playgroup setting that helps integrate migrant (primarily

Turkish and Moroccan) women and children into the Dutch culture.

Portugal Agüeda Movement – Bela Vista

The movement works to identify and then provide services for children at risk,

socially and in terms of special needs. Work is with communities to maximise their

access to available services, and with the services so that they more appropriately

meet the needs of children and families.

Honduras Madres Guiás – Guide Mothers

Within this programme, mothers are trained to run preschool programmes. The

programme has now been extended into the early primary years to upgrade quality

and facilitate the transition of children from the preschool to the primary setting.

B e r n a r d v a n L e e r Fo u n d a t i o n 10 E a r l y C h i l d h o o d M a t t e r s

The creation of teams

Teams are evolving and networking is beginning.

Each programme, in collaboration with staff, hasbeen responsible for the selection and preparation ofits team. Teams consist of four or more people,depending on the needs at a given site. Team membershave been drawn from:• programme staff and local consultants;• staff from other programmes in the ;• staff from the Bernard van Leer Foundation;• disciplines where expertise is required to better

understand a given programme (for example: instatistics, data analysis and cost/benefit studies); and

• staff from international organisations involved infunding programmes.

We are already experiencing the benefits of thesynergy of the different programmes, team membersand methods coming together as a result of our firstworkshop that took place in The Hague in July 1999.This workshop proved to be a very stimulating andrewarding launch of the . Bringing people togetherfrom different programmes was extremely helpfulbecause it was done within a setting where it was safe

for people to be open with one another, and where thefacilitator worked with the group to create a sharedvision.

During the workshop we observed, we learned andseveral things were reinforced:

• we learned that the open architecture of the project,while initially confusing, permits participants to letthemselves ask questions collectively in an openforum, that they previously had hesitated to exploreon their own. This has resulted in some questionsemerging, and others being formulated morethoughtfully; while those of us involved with the

are honing our ability to listen more attentively.

• As the skill, knowledge and abilities of the individualteam members became more evident to people onother teams, cross-programme exchanges – always ahoped for outcome – began to develop. Teamsproposed bringing in specific people to join theirteam at different points in time. For example, one ofthe team members from India made the initial sitevisit to the Philippines. One of the team membersfrom Peru will visit Colombia as part of a site visit

to the community involved in the programme there.An individual who is central to the programme inKenya will be part of the India team, and a personfrom the Israel programme has been invited to workwith the programme in the Philippines. We areanticipating that the addition of one time orfocused visits and exchanges will enrich the cross-programme work, and that the number and varietyof these exchanges will increase over the life of the project and beyond.

• Most excitingly, we have come away from our firstjoint team workshop with the conviction thatpeople have even more instruments at their disposalthan we initially gave them credit for. The workshopalso helped people to validate what they wanted todo. This has freed them to use their own tools moreconfidently, and to create new ones.

The teams at each site are now in the process ofdeveloping site-specific instruments and gatheringdata. We will all come together again in early 2000 toshare the process and findings so far, and work ondata analysis techniques.

As soon as data are reduced we are distanced from

what we want to know and understand“”

The development of questions

We are asking questions differently and are beginning tohear a different set of questions asked.

A key to generating understanding will be in theframing of the questions asked within the . Whenwe, as development workers and/or funders, askquestions, people can and are willing to respond.However, we need to be aware of the fact that thequestions we ask may well limit how people respond,and may not be the salient questions they themselveswould ask. We may not have thought to ask the kindof questions that will help reveal the real meaning ofthe experience for all those involved, and we may notbe skilled enough to hear the meaning for therespondents of what they tell us.

It is extremely difficult to move beyond what wealready know how to ask and hear while, from theother side, Pearce (1971) would claim that: ‘We hearonly the question to which we are capable of findingan answer.’ (page 70) We are very aware that we haveonly a very narrow repertoire of questions and toolsfor investigating those questions. This is extremelylimiting. The question for us is: ‘Can some newquestions be developed?’ If so, there is the possibilitythat we can collectively begin to answer them.

In this light, we also want to validate intuition. Wewant to help explore the use of tools that will allow usto better articulate or justify our sense that things are,

or are not working, without being able to justify thatsense by recourse to a checklist or a standardisedinstrument. We are hoping to add to the developmentworkers’ toolkit by creating some additional methodsfor observation and making sense of the contexts inwhich programmes are conducted. In a way we needto find adequate language outside the usual researchframeworks to validate experiences and so on.

The development of processes

We are developing processes that willprovide us with the skills to betterlisten, understand, andinterpret people’s experienceand situations.

We knew before westarted that it wouldnot be enough tojust ask questions,even new ones.

Nor would it be enough to merely repeat what hasbeen said for at least the last 30 years in thedevelopment world: that we need to listen better inorder to better understand the responses we get; thatlistening does not mean a condescending, perfunctoryhalf-hearted listening where the listener is drawingconclusions while the information is presented;

Israel: play and funThe Association For TheAdvancement of theEthiopian Family andChild in Israel Beer-Sheva NationalDissemination Project(poster competition entry)

that listening means finding ways toreceive people’s responses fully beforetrying to analyse, interpret or categorisetheir meaning; that listening meansstaying open to hearing and seeing andunderstanding. We knew we would haveto go beyond this rhetoric. One way inwhich we will do this is to turn eachperson in the into an ‘outsider’looking in, and simultaneously an‘insider’ looking out, at the programmeand its context and environment. Thisapproach of combining an ‘etic’(outsider’s objective) perspective, withan ‘emic’ (insider’s subjective)perspective, will allow us to honour ourcommitment to getting at what aresometimes self-contradictoryunderstandings of what is beingachieved in programmes.3

We will also incorporate othersuccessful strategies. For example,within the development organisationsworking in the majority world, in areassuch as agriculture, water andsanitation, and micro credit, a numberof strategies have been perfected to tryto listen to people and to get anunderstanding of their lives, their needsand their desires. These includetechniques such as ParticipatoryLearning for Action () that helpstimulate conversations that were notpossible when communities were onlyobserved by outsiders. These techniqueshave allowed us to collect new kinds ofdata. But is that enough?

Robert Chambers’ (1997) reflections onthe development of the methods,

which he has so successfully promoted,reveal that he has realised the limits ofopen methodologies in getting atmeaning. This is partly because it is notenough to only use more openmethodologies for the gathering ofdata. Understanding of meaning canonly come if we learn to work moreskilfully with the data we generate.

One difficulty in the current use of

techniques is that within them the dataare sometimes reduced or summed uptoo quickly. For example, a comparisonbetween how a girl child or a boy childspends the day in a given setting canquickly get summed up as ‘Boys arefavoured in this culture’. Yet that tells uslittle about the values, beliefs andpractices that lead to boys beingfavoured, and provides no insight intohow one might work within the cultureto bring about more gender equality.

Thus, in addition to creating and usingrather open methodologies, we need todevelop a variety of tools for analysis

that provide us with a layeredunderstanding of meaning. It is not amatter of working towards areductionist summing up of the data toyield one single conclusion. We want totake pictures from a number of angles;not to reduce the complexity of thesituation but rather to recognise andexplore the complexity as fully aspossible. This requires a variety ofanalytical techniques. Even whenbrought to bear on a single data set, theuse of a variety of methodologies canreveal different facets of meaning. Theform of research that we are engagingin sees people as analysers of meaningeven as they create it.(Barritt, et al 1979)

At the heart of meaning is language. Inboth the gathering and analysis of datawe are reliant on language. As noted byBarritt, et al. (1979), within qualitativeresearch we seek data dominated bylanguage and cultural understanding,not by numbers. Numbers areimportant, but they should not be the



only points of reference. The kind ofstudy we are undertaking lives withinthe tradition of language that has animportant history, especially for most ofthe cultures whose experience we aretrying to understand. Language allowsus to highlight aspects of experiencethat might otherwise go unmarked.‘Analysis of language requires rhetoricalskill, the attention to meaning, and thestruggle to say it right; we cannotescape the tradition; we have to use it.’(Barritt et al, chapter 6 p3)

One of the things that excites us aboutthe is that it provides an opportunityto validate an approach that allowspeople to tell their stories in their ownlanguage, without our immediatelyclassifying, censoring or interpreting thestories or leaping to conclusions tooquickly. Part of our collective workacross the whole project is to interpretthe stories together, broadening thebasis for analysis, in the hopes that thiswill allow us to truly hear what we arebeing told.

Establishing a framework

We will be producing ‘cuts’ or ‘maps’ ofprogramme contexts.

As the Effectiveness Initiative was beingdeveloped, the Advisory Committeemet in September 1998, to develop a setof questions that its members initiallyhad in mind about the nature ofeffective organisations. Those questionswere related to different ‘cuts’ or ‘maps’that reflected the histories ofprogrammes.

During the initial site visits, thesequestions were shared with people asexamples of the kinds of things we wereinterested in knowing more about.People immediately identified with thenotion of telling the story of theprogramme by answering the questionsfor themselves. In some instancespeople were already asking similarquestions of themselves. In otherinstances programme staff thought thatby answering the questions they coulddo their work better. And still others

saw the opportunity to reflect on theirorganisational history as a way ofguiding their work in the future. Thus,all the programmes adopted this set ofquestions, and their associated cuts ormaps, as a place to begin.

One particular cut that wasrecommended by members of theAdvisory Committee –the project timeline –took on a life of its ownduring the site visits.This has now beenadopted by all the sitesas a kind of initialframework upon whichthe story of eachorganisation can beanchored. It provides astarting point for peopleto reflect on what theyset out to do and howthat has changed overtime. In essence, theinitial questions, noworganised around the

timeline, have become a vital,universally embraced tool in the

toolkit. The timeline incorporates thefollowing ‘cuts’ or ‘maps’.

• Influences. This cut consists of adescription of all the things that haveinfluenced the programme atdifferent points in time. For example,


We live our lives embedded in language. So why do

we turn to numbers to define our truth?“

”

Belgium: learning to listen, Liege Pilot Project


these might well include a descriptionof the context (economic, politicaland cultural) when the programmebegan; how the context has changedover time; and how those involvedperceive that these changes haveaffected the programme. Within thisthere is interest in capturing the waysin which serendipity and personal

choices have affected the programme;and in gaining some understandingof the resources (financial andphysical) available over the life of theprogramme, and what this has meantfor the programme.

• Attitudes/Stance. This cut is aboutpeople exploring the underlying

assumptions (implicit as well asexplicit) within the programme. It isan attempt to identify theassumptions of those working in theprogramme. For example, what arethe values and beliefs about children’sdevelopment and the way childrenlearn, that determine the kinds ofactivities undertaken in theprogramme? What are people’s beliefsabout the value of intervening andabout kinds of interventions?

• The structure of the organisation. Thismapping will produce anorganisational chart and a descriptionof how that has changed over time.There will also be information on theleadership of the project and howthat has changed (or not) over time.

• The culture of the organisation. Thiscut reveals the culture of theorganisation as it is demonstrated bythe processes used within theorganisation to address problems;overcome obstacles; make decisions;recruit, hire and train staff; and so on.It will also include information onwho participates, at what points intime, and in which ways.

• Linkages. This mapping will show thekinds of linkages that have beenformed with other organisations,individuals, donors, and government;as well as the networks that theorganisation is part of and the rolesthat it plays in those networks.

• Outcomes. This cut will show thekinds of influences – looked at fromthe perspectives of some of thestakeholders – that the organisationhas had and is having on others: thechildren and families involved in theprogramme; staff; the community;other organisations – And it alsoincludes the broader context (such asgovernment policy).

• Mapping the future. This speculativemapping will show how programmesenvisage the future and how they seethe programme developing over timewith respect to: its underlyingphilosophy; its assumptions, goalsand activities; the nature of theorganisation; the processes used tomake decisions; the kinds of linkageswith other organisations; and thenature of the outcomes.

Guatemala: tell me your story ... Quiché Fundaespro Projectphoto: Trustee Dr R Freudenberg

Telling the story

The stories are beginning to be told –however, the story of a programme is notself evident.

One of the things we have begun torealise is that people do not always findit easy or natural to tell their own story;we are all used to censoring ourselvesand shortcutting the process. This wasso vividly brought home in the firstvisit made to one of the programmesites. There it became clear that in thetelling of a complicated story that is fullof twists and turns and differentexperiences, there was a tendency totake shortcuts, avoid uncomfortabletopics and to merely describe the final outcome.

This is compounded by two things:first, that those involved in aprogramme as implementers orbeneficiaries do not necessarily knowwhat it is that outsiders want to knowabout their story; and second, thatgenerally outsiders are not very good atgetting at an experience from the pointof view of the person experiencing it.The result is that, if they were to tell thestory of the programme, their storieswould often not be recognisable to

those in the programme. Even if theywere to get the story right, they wouldnot necessarily be able to identify theaspects of experience that make theprogramme effective, or even knowwhether that dimension is perceived byothers as being effective.

Thus, eliciting the story, in all itsrichness, is the challenge for the

teams. Here we have to remember thatpeople within the programme have verydifferent perceptions of what hashappened over the years: they havedifferent entry points and, coming fromdiverse backgrounds, each brings aunique perspective to the effort. Puttingtheir story together with the perceptionsand experiences of people who areoutside the programme adds anadditional challenge. Yet ultimately,success will revolve around good, soundstorytelling.

The approach to the task and themethodologies being used, place anemphasis on making meaning out of thematerial we gather, and telling it all in away that resonates with, and isappreciated by others. Already, throughinterviews and activities that helpprovide an understanding of how

organisations have arrived at where theyare, and what that means in terms oftheir impact, many stories are being told.Documentation is usually thought oflate in the process. However, we want toset processes in motion to tell the storywhile it is evolving. We have begun tothink that each site should have a writerworking with them to bring out thestory by creating a drama, or producinga film, or writing a novel, or using avariety of media to convey the variousaspects of the programme.

Some assumptions we carry with us

Despite all our best intentions, we areaware that we are not going into thisactivity with a blank slate, theoreticallyor in terms of our own practices andexperiences. We bring with us a set ofassumptions, first of all about how theworld operates; and second, about whatwe are going to find out about effective programmes. We have tried toarticulate our assumptions knowing wellthat such an exercise can only be part ofthe picture. Some of these assumptionswere explicit when we began, someimplicit. In either case, nine monthsinto the project, here is what we have tosay about our assumptions.

We have an agenda

No matter how purist we try to be inbeing open and in listening andhearing, we do have our ownperspective and agenda.

We would not be working in this field ifwe did not think that we had somethingto offer to others, yet it is not politicallycorrect to talk about the ways in whichwe would like to see people’s liveschanged. We tend to end up workingwith communities until their needs fitour ability to respond to their needs.One development specialist made thecomment, ‘If we want them to respondwe have to teach them to respond.’ But,we lose when we have taught people torespond.

As interventionists we have to beconscious of our imposition of goals,perspectives and agenda for action, andunderstand the impact – positive andnegative – of the criteria we areimposing. At the very least we shouldnot delude ourselves that we areworking in a completely value-free way.


We begin with some beliefs abouteffectiveness

From our beliefs come assumptionsthat we make as we try to understandeffectiveness. These include thateffectiveness:

• cannot be defined in terms of auniversally accepted truth. There is nosingle dimension that would makeevery early childhood programme‘effective’. We are assuming that thereare multiple truths and that there isdisagreement about what constitutesan effective programme. We areseeking to know where there isagreement in people’s experiencesand we are trying to understandsomething of the nature of thedisagreements.

• Is a fluctuating concept. Theeffectiveness of an effort changes overtime and as a result of changingconditions.

• Cannot be placed on a linear scalealong which programmes can beranked from most to least effective.

• Resides in an organisation, yet varies within an organisation. Someparts of the organisation may well bemuch stronger than other parts.

Thus, effectiveness is best representedas a profile that is compounded fromthe cuts and maps.

• Takes time to identify and understand.It is not possible to capture anunderstanding of what constituteseffective programming in asnapshot. It requires living with andexperiencing multiple situations thatcannot be reduced to a static study ofa single point in time. It requires timeto recognise how and whensomething is effective in process andoutcomes.

• Is the result of experience, and acomposite of many experiences.

Fashioning tools as we proceed

We are being willingly changed as weassemble, develop or invent the toolsthat we are using; as we move awayfrom the relatively cosy approaches weknow and have trusted; as we struggleto cope with the stresses andcomplexities of being creative withwhat we have; as we combine so manydifferent skills; as we try to operatesuccessfully with them; and as we bringthem to bear in different combinationsfor different places and circumstances.For example, we are having to become

much more open, much more sensitive,much more quick footed, much morecompetent in coping with nuancedrealities as we take on qualitativeresearch approaches and methods.These offer us validated and tested toolsbut we have to adapt them to thespecific uses and purposes of examining settings, in all their complexity andin the wealth and interplay ofdimensions that they embody. They

help us to identify new data sourcessuch as stories and anecdotes, interviewtranscripts, field notes, recordings ofnatural interactions, and documents,pictures, and other graphicrepresentations; they allow us to carryout studies of human experiences thatare not approachable throughquantitative methods – and they alsochange us, and make us differentpersonally and different professionally.4


Uganda: learning to express a story. Madrasa Resource Centre/Kiti Muslim Nursery School (poster competition entry)


Where we are now

In summary, we believe that bringingthe use of qualitative tools into theworld of , for gathering andprocessing data, will give a betterunderstanding of what we see and hearand distil from the process: it is the firsttime for many. We know that inquantitative research it is consideredcrucial to begin with a fixed/prescribedset of methods and procedures that areto be used with conformity across allstudy sites. However, in this effort, weare consciously working without anormative blueprint in the hopes thatwe will be able to identify patterns andindividual differences in the case studiesthat would not appear if we startedwith a fixed constellation ofassumptions. By taking this approachwe get both information and process.

It may be that the outcomes confirmwhat we already knew intuitively. Howvaluable that would be, given that somuch of what we know is not validatedby existing research and is not takeninto serious consideration when ourorganisations make programmingdecisions. However, we feel that theprocess we are engaged in is of equal or

even greater value than the outcomeswe might discover. The fact that thereare over fifty people embarking on ajourney together, and actively engagedin a dialogue together to generate boththe questions and the methodologies toaddress those questions, contributes tothe creation of a process that will last farbeyond the . The cross-site exchanges,the periodic meetings of all the teammembers to create a way forwardtogether, the frequent exchanges andsharing of information and activitiesalong the way: they all contribute tojoint ownership of a set of qualitativeresearch strategies that can be used witha wide variety of programmes.

Over the course of the dialogues with

participants, the analogy of a riverbegan to emerge as a way of talkingabout what happens withinprogrammes. Rivers start small. Wherethey go, their depth, and breadth, aredetermined by multiple factors withintheir environment. Some rivers flowalong a rather predictable path, butmost are diverted from their naturalcourse in some way – and they alsocreate their own courses. At times theyare fed by tributaries and widen as aresult, covering more ground; at other

times they shrink as a result of drought.At times there are dams that impedetheir progress altogether, or cause themto flood and destroy otherwise fertileground. Some flow into lakes andmaintain an identify all their own;others flow into the ocean and, as partof that ocean, are no longer apart andunique. And as rivers flow and grow,they also shape and influence theenvironments through which they passand of which they are a vital part. Likerivers, programmes have progressed,have been influenced and have hadinfluence in their own distinctive ways.As we trace their courses, we can beginto map the contours of the territorythat each programme has covered andwe can see their influence. Even as the is getting underway, we can see thatthe work will result in new ways tonavigate, and that the voyage will havebeen well worth the effort. "

Notes

1. The Advisory Committee consists of:

Robert G Myers (Consultative Group); Kathy Bartlett

(); Dr S Anandalakshmy (Consultant); Kirk

Felsman (Duke University); Leonardo Yanéz

(Consultant); Michelle Poulton (); Caroline

Arnold () and Feny de los Angeles Bautista

(Community of Learners Foundation).

2. The Consultative Group joined the effort as a

partner, and focused their April 1999 meeting on the

topic of indicators of effectiveness.

3. It is important to point out that we do not mean

to create a dichotomy between literal ‘outsiders’ and

‘insiders’ here since we know that both insiders and

outsiders can simultaneously hold ‘emic’ and ‘etic’

perspectives. We are trying to suggest that it is in the

synthesis between these two approaches that a fuller

picture of effective programming will emerge.

4. Salole G; Learning to hear with the third ear:

bricolage and its importance for possible new directions

in ; (June 1995) address to National Educare

Forum, South Africa.

Bibliography

Barritt LS, Beekman AJ, Bleeker H, and Mulderij K,

Science not Method; (1979); unpublished manuscript.

Chambers R, Whose Reality Counts? Putting the First

Last; (1997) Intermediate Technology Publications,

London.

Coffey A, and Atkinson P, Making Sense of Qualitative

Data: Complementary Research Strategies; (1996)

Sage Publications, London.

Geertz C, Local Knowledge: Further Essays in

Interpretative Anthropology; (1983) Basic Books, NY.

Levi-Strauss, The Savage Mind; (1966) Weidenfeld

and Nicolson, London.

Moustakas C, Phenomenological Research Methods;

(1994) Sage Publications, London.

Pearce JC, The Crack in the Cosmic Egg; (1971)

Washington Square Press, New York.

Stories we tell,moments that stay with us:

examining your experience with ECD

to gain a deeper understanding of effective programming and care for

young children and their families.

Ellen Meredith Ilfeld

Think about moments in your professional (and personal) life that havestayed with you – times when you said to yourself: ‘This is it – this is reallyworking’ ‘This is why I do what I do’ or ‘This is just horrible!’. Think aboutthe situations that stick in your mind as emblems of what you understandor value. Think about events that in your mind represent the best or worstor most typical ways that children are treated, or that families are living –

events that opened your eyes to important perspectives or truths.

Botswana: joy in dancingKuru Development Trust


Kenya: watching and learningChildren of Kiwanja Kimaye Child Development Project

All of us who work in , whatever our professional role,have such moments stored either consciously or subliminallyin our mental map of meaning. They are (some of them)highly personal, often charged with strong feeling, and theylink somehow to our value system (‘This was a perfectexample of what I’m working so hard to achieve’. ‘This was aperfect example of what’s wrong with xxx – governments,parents, our own organisations, other organisations’). Theseemblematic stories we store in our minds are small worlds ofmeaning that we understand directly; to explain theirsignificance to someone else is difficult.

Unfortunately most of us are trained academically tooverlook these stories and anecdotal ‘evidence’ as toosubjective, irrelevant to the larger picture, or not significant.Yet these stories offer us some important doorways tounderstanding experience in all its complexity.

1 They reflect our value system, and can reveal ourprejudices, emphases, and affinities. They often influenceour decisions, whether we are aware of it or not.

2 They show us how our intuition sorts or categorisesexperience – which may or may not match the way we sortthings logically.

3 They often serve as touchstones – motivating us,energising us, and helping us to explain, to ourselves atleast, why we make the professional and personal choiceswe’re making.

4 They often serve as mental shorthand for whole complexesof understanding, knowledge and experience that arecrucial to our intellectual and emotional understanding of

Colombia: playing and learning on the beachCosta Atlántica Project


what we do professionally. (For example, you mightcatch yourself thinking: ‘This is another of thosekids-on-the-beach-in-xxxx situations’. Only youknow what this shorthand means, but chances are,it is full of layers of meaning for you that would bedifficult to explain fully to someone else.)

5 They can offer us a way to break through limitedand patterned thinking, if we learn how to‘research’ and mine our own understanding inmore depth.

What happens if we take the time to articulate andexplore our own mental maps of understanding aboutchildren, families, and communities, and to identifysome of the emblematic situations and significantevents that shape our personal and professionalunderstanding? Even the most orthodox guides tosocial science research advise the researcher toacknowledge his or her own biases. But within socialscience, the goal in doing this is to be able tosomehow neutralise these biases in a study design.This is important if you want to apply rigorousscientific method to the study of human experience.

However, in the discussion that follows, we are goingto explore another path: applying rigorousliterary/narrative/qualitative research method to thestudy of human experience. The premise of this issimple: the experiences of children, families andcommunities are coded, stored and couched inlanguage – both in the language we use to tell our

stories, and in the symbolic mental shorthandlanguage we each use to store our understanding. So ifwe wish to explore what makes a programme effective,to understand the experiences of children, families,and communities at risk, and to gain greater clarityabout our own roles in supporting them, we canbenefit from starting with a deeper examination ofwhat we, individually and collectively, know from ourown experience.

Within the Effectiveness Initiative (), our initialexploration has begun with an effort to identify ourown experience (as professionals) with effective

programming and to examine it in more detail. Wecarried out half-day workshops with two groups of professionals – members of the ConsultativeGroup on Early Childhood Care and Developmentconsortium () who were joined by the

Advisory Committee, and a group of Bernard vanLeer Foundation (v) staff members. Theseworkshops focused on an exploration of ourindividual experiences with moments in an

setting when we said to ourselves ‘This is reallyworking’. The analysis of the ‘data’ (in this case,written stories and group discussion) generatedthrough these workshops is presented in thediscussion below.

As Evans and Salole indicate in ‘When works:mapping the contours of effective programming’(page 7), the concept of ‘effectiveness’ is large and

abstract. Most of us break it down in our minds: whatworked in particular situations; what had desiredoutcomes; what felt dynamic; exciting and productiveas a process; and so on.

The workshops were further replicated a month laterin Peru with programme staff and the teamworking with the programme, one of the tensites being explored within the Effectiveness Initiative.Results from that workshop will be presented in afuture publication.



One of the participants in thisexploration quite rightly pointed outthat effectiveness and ‘it is working’ arenot necessarily the same thing. Aneffective programme may havesituations that don’t work, and anineffective programme may well havemoments that work beautifully.Furthermore, in several participants’thinking, ‘effective’ programming islinked to outcomes, and examiningmoments of meaning does notnecessarily yield insight into outcomes.However, in the workshops weproceeded to explore the more limitedrealm of ‘moments when we felt asituation was really working’, on theassumption that it would give us, asprofessionals working in , insightsinto our experiences with the dynamicsof effective moments for children,parents, communities and

programmes in general.

The insights into ‘what works’ in

settings that emerged from this studydo not offer the definitive word oneffective programming. They offerinstead a starting place for furtherexploration and study: a collective mapof issues and concerns distilled from thestories that stay with us personally and

professionally. What they can do is toprovide us with more detail about howwe shape our thinking about ,and to point out directions thatindividual teams might look in theirown explorations.

Methodology

Thirty-three individuals participatedactively in the study that I discuss in thisarticle, twenty-five of them at the April1999 meeting in Paris and eight ofthem at a similar workshop offered toBernard van Leer Foundation staff. Theassignment was to think of a moment inan setting, when you said toyourself: ‘This is really working!’ We leftthe definition of ‘ setting’ open: itcould include personal or professionalmoments involving children, parents, planning, or anything else theindividual considered to be .

Then, we asked participants to takeabout 20 minutes to half an hour todescribe that moment in writing. Wetold them their goal was to just tell thestory – who was involved, what theyexperienced, what happened – in asmuch detail as possible. We encouragedthem to just write, without censoring or

editing their thoughts, and not to worryabout their English or their writingstyle. (We did ask them to write legibly,and to write their story out rather thanjust making notes, because someoneelse would be reading their story.)

After the writing period, we discussedthe experience – both the difficultiespeople had with the activity, and anythoughts or observations people had

from writing their own story. Then,while participants took a short break,we selected and made copies of two ofthe stories (selected more or less atrandom, though we did choose legibleand medium length accounts) for thegroup to ‘code’ and then analysetogether.

Coding the stories involves goingthrough and underlining each ‘unit of



meaning’ for the author. For example, in the followingparagraph, each underlined phrase is a separate unit ofmeaning:

In the Choco project – two years after it had startedthe mothers and community of Pangui werereflecting about their experience in the ‘preschool athome’ programme that had come to an end forthem: what they had learned, what the children hadlearned, how the community had improved, howthe men were active in improving the sanitation,how they were interacting with other neighbours.They thought collectively about how to continue theexperience with their own resources. They decidedto build a centre where children could spend 3hours a day, and the community could meet.Someone donated a piece of land, every person inthe meeting committed herself to participating inthe construction: clearing the land, getting the sand,the wood and other materials. They appointed oneof the ‘promotoras’ (the educational agent for thepreschool at home) as the teacher. She committedherself to work with children and parents. ()

The goal in this activity is to work as closely with thetext as possible to identify and distil the meaning thatthe author has encoded there. It also allows theanalyser to identify what phrases and language theauthor uses to express meaning. Several participantsjumped ahead and began to synthesise or summarisethe main ‘message’ of the story. Instead, we asked them

to stick with a closer sentence by sentence recognitionof what was there. Analysis and synthesis is a laterstep, once you have identified all the pieces ofmeaning the author has included.

One participant observed that working this carefullywith the text made her realise how often she jumpsahead and summarises what she thinks a personmeans, rather than taking the time to really look at theperson’s meaning in its own context. She said‘Sometimes when I think I’m listening to someone,I’m actually only hearing my own conclusions aboutwhat she must mean’. Another participant noticed thatadding the step of ‘distilling meaning’ allowed her towork with narrative accounts in more detail – she hadgathered stories before, but hadn’t known how toanalyse them once she got them. Carrying out aprocess of coding and distilling allows you to produceconcrete data to work with in your analysis.

At each step of the way, we asked the authors toconfirm or refute our observations. It is useful to havethe authors there to consult, since the point of theactivity is to find out what an experience means to theperson telling the story. In a few cases, theexplanations the author provided added another layerof meaning to the account – and a deeper way for thegroup to understand the author’s experience.

Once all the units of meaning, or ‘themes’ wereidentified in the two stories, we then discussed those

themes that were common to the two stories, andthose that were significant but individual. This is thesame technique that later was applied by a small groupof people analysing the full data set of 35 stories.Themes within each story were ‘distilled’ and thencommon themes and individual themes wereidentified. The discussion below was then shaped bythe ways that themes appeared to ‘cluster’ across thestories, and by the ways individuals addressed them.We have used the language of the original story writers(informants) as often as possible, to stick as closely totheir meaning as we could.

Overview

There were 21 women storywriters and 12 men (twoindividuals wrote two stories). In total, we collected 35stories about diverse aspects of ‘What is working’ in. Because we left the parameters open, the choiceof topics and perspectives people wrote about aresignificant: it gives us a range of themes that stand outfor us individually and collectively, rather than givingus depth of understanding into one particularexperience (another possible way to use thismethodology).

Nine of the 35 stories were focused on the writer’spersonal experience as a parent; all of these were bywomen. It is remarkable that although the stories weregathered in a professional context, from people whowork in , so many women chose to write about a


moment with their own children, orfriends’ children, as emblematic ofwhen an early childhoodsetting/situation was working.

Fourteen of the stories focus in onspecific interactions between adultsand children; 21 stories focus on wholeprogrammes or settings as emblematicof what was working. Similarly, 13 ofthe stories show a moment ofbreakthrough or learning that revealeda new insight, and 22 are moregeneralised descriptions of situationsthat represent to the writer aperspective, quality or situation theywanted to depict.

The stories take place in 29 differentcountries, in 12 different kinds ofsettings:1 family/home settings – 72 preschool /centres – 5

(kindergarten – 1)3 community based ecd,

intergenerational, family andcommunity activism – 6

4 daycare centres – 45 regional training workshops

plus international ecd meetings – 36 women’s groups – 2

7 parent education/mother training groups – 2

8 home visiting programme – 19 teacher training – 110 university paediatric training – 1 11 family resource centre – 112 filming/documentation

activity – 1

This reminds us that effective canand does take place in diverse settings.It is perhaps significant that so manypeople chose to write about thefamily/home context. This may bebecause one third of the storytellerschose to write about effectivemoments with children they knewpersonally. It may also reflect aprofessional consensus that for youngchildren, effective experiences in thehome and family context are veryimportant.

Making sense of our ECD experience

Despite or because of the setting?

It is not just story telling conventionthat leads us to start our tales with adescription of the place and situation.These elements matter, and in some

cases, are the motivations for aprogramme to be created:

Yacambu – This is a bunch of verytiny rural villages in the north end ofthe Venezuelan Andes. Peasants wererunning a preschool programme ontheir own, because the university hadfailed to provide one. No teacherwanted to go to a place where morethan a day journey is needed to visitthe small villages around the xx.Therefore a group of mothers decidedto create ‘family preschools’ in eachvillage, and with the support of fiveuniversities of that region, they gottraining and had an education studentto visit and plan every week. ()

The remote setting and difficulty ofaccess to resources led local people inthis account to create their ownstructure for a programme – one suitedto the place, their culture, and to theresources they could draw on. Thelimitations in this situation created anatural ‘pressure’ for local people tohave to get involved, create somethingfor their children, reach out to regionaland national resources, and take thelead – in other words to participate inthe fullest sense of the word.

Participation – an ideal espoused inmany of the stories – was ironicallyencouraged by limitations in thesetting. If a trained teacher could haveeasily commuted from a nearby city, itis quite possible this set of villageswould not have generated such aninnovative approach.

Almost five years later … the projectwas spread through the regions tomore than 300 communities, anational university is training mothersfor early care of children, the regionalgovernment has assumed the project asa local strategy to increase the coverageof early childhood care and educationand, in Yacambu, peasants haveyielded a land ownership to theirpreschool children, where the parentsmust work, in order to fund children’smeals and dress. ()

Because the approach was created inresponse to the setting, it was aviable model for similarcommunities, and it ‘spread’ – atheme that appears in severalaccounts of effective programmes.Spreading is a significant word: it hasan organic element to it; it is motivated


from within, rather than imposed fromwithout by governments orinternational donor agencies trying toreplicate models.

A setting is made up of more than itsgeographical characteristics: a settingmay be a remote village next to astream, where the weather is hot andhumid and people gather under thetrees or in bamboo huts where theycan get shade – and where theytraditionally meet and interact. Asetting may be a ramshackle set of‘poor communities living alongside arailway line, where materialconditions (are) minimal, (and) there(is) so much ‘waste’ lying around thatpeople could use to make toys orgames.’ (kb)

Equally a setting may be a ‘village’,which through several accounts takeson a meaning that goes beyond a smallcompound of dwellings. The village isdescribed in terms of its human andcultural arrangement as well as itsphysical set-up.

When I walked around Baragoi Ididn’t find any brick buildings, but

Colombia: preparing a community celebrationCosta Atlántica Project


instead an active group of childrenand some adults under a big shadytree. They were busy playing, listeningto stories from the grandmothers, andonce in a while mothers would comein to breastfeed …

They have a lot of interestingtraditional toys, for example, a littledonkey made of straw that carries thewhole household of the family on itsback. The grandmothers use these toysto tell stories of how the Samburumove from one place to another,building their Manyattas(homesteads), and what are theimportant items they need – acalabash for the milk, cooking pots,rope to tie the animals, long poles tobuild the home, and so on. ()

In the village setting multiple elementscome into play in determining whetherthe care for children is working; thetypical buildings, the streams andmeeting places, the cultural habits ofthe place, and also the traditionalcultural habits of the group of peopleare all called into play and somehow‘harnessed’. The implication is thateffective programmes build upon thevillage that is there and are structured

in keeping with the village that is there;the visitor is pleased to find no brickbuildings. That would imply importedand superimposed structures fromoutside. She finds it effective thatchildren are taught about theirnomadic traditions, and are taughtusing the important ‘items’ of theirpeople.

The importance of the village as asetting for childcare is highlightedpoignantly in accounts of people whosevillages or home settings have beendestroyed: people living in refugeecamps and resettlement sites:

This memory of effectiveness, the ‘AhHa’ experience of ‘this is working’,took place in a Malawian camp… A programme of early childhood carebased on the model of ‘Escolinhas’(little schools) was introduced. Theproject had multiple sites in the campaccording to its village structure. Thesites were very informal and consistedof trees or thatched roofing to provideshade. They were guided by‘animadores’ or adult animators,primarily women, who had receivedbasic orientation according to thepractices in Mozambique… ()

Several accounts of people disrupted bywar or displacement highlight theimportance of recreating a village-likestructure, or a cohesive sense ofcommunity (in several cases the villagestands for the storyteller as a symbol of‘community’).

Thus the setting – and its naturalfeatures (shady trees, rivers, crops andseasons), as well as its cultural features(traditional items of daily use,languages, work patterns, availablepeople, and stories, songs and dances)is highlighted as a framework whichallows an effective programme to ariseor be introduced successfully.

All of the accounts praising a villagesetting as a holistic and rich setting forchildren are given by visitors, outsiderswho find the programmes that build onthese contexts effective. Several citereasons for considering the programmessuccessful: the programme has spread toother areas; it has been adopted byregional or national authorities;preschools are still running withoutexternal funding five years later; theyhave spawned other community-building activities such as sanitationefforts, political activism to improve

infrastructure, training and educationfor mothers, and so on. Thus, while itwould be useful to look further into howchildren, parents, and other communitymembers experience village-mouldedprogramming, it does seem to stand outas a rich model for the group of

professionals who wrote about it assignificant to their experience.

There is a thin line between whatpeople choose to set up for theirchildren because of the setting (itslimitations and its resources), and whatis created despite difficult conditions.

We came upon a small centre run bythe Mobile Crèches (in India), for theinfants and young children ofconstruction workers in the

compound. It was a small improvisedroom of three by four metres or so, andthere were about 25 children and threecaregivers inside. Three infants wereasleep in the hammock (attached to awooden frame) and looked clean andfed … The facilities were minimal, aswas the space. The floor was sanded,and only where the infants andtoddlers sat were there straw mats …The centre had been there for fourmonths at the time of our visit … ()


This centre made a deep impression onthe visitor, because despite the very‘minimal’ conditions, the children wereclean, well fed, and active. The dailyroutine appeared to be so wellestablished after only four months thatfor the visitor it highlighted ‘theorganisation and training that musthave gone into the programme for it toappear so simple for a casual visitor’.() In this case, like in several others,organisation and training were thefactors that were key, despite lack ofphysical resources, space, orsophisticated equipment.

The setting is an early childhoodeducation centre in a low-incomeneighbourhood of Mexico City … (a teacher is observed having a richexchange with the children) …Observing this experience, I felt thatthe curriculum that had beendeveloped and the training that hadbeen provided, was working eventhough material conditions were notvery good and the teachers were notcertified. ()

The setting is important, and it mayalso be irrelevant. If qualityprogrammes can be established despite

difficult conditions, then they are oftendue to curriculum, to dedicated staff(as we will discuss below), toorganisation, or to practical trainingprovided to under-educated caregivers.Sometimes their success is due to a‘magnetic pull’ () that somecaregivers seem to achieve through acombination of a ‘bottomless resourcebag, a toolkit … a magic bag’ () ofactivities and a dynamic way ofworking with children and adults.

Important people, arrangements of people

To an outsider it looked like a‘traditional’ arrangement forextended family childcare. However,what the grandmother and mother ofthe children shared was the mutualneed of the arrangement … Soextended family care ‘works’ but notas (Î) previously understood. ()

If we understand people, and theirinter-relationships, strengths, interests,and motivations, we are touching on animportant element of what makes an setting work. Thirteen of thestories touched on moments ofpersonal or collective breakthrough –

when something new was learned,small ‘moments of happiness’ ()took place that illuminated somethingimportant, when ‘what looked like theend of a part of the programmebecame a new, exciting, andchallenging beginning for all of us’.() These moments revolve aroundrelationships and interactions that fellinto place and allowed children andadults to grow, gain insight, seesolutions to problems, and/or change. Some of them revolved simplyaround a moment of joy, achievement,or pride:

• a parent enjoying a moment oflaughter and surprise with herchildren;

• a father experiencing a moment ofbreakthrough in learning how tocommunicate with a multiply-disabled child;

• a teacher using a child’s questionabout a cat to explore a whole worldof children’s observations anddeductions;

• a playing child who is finally, afterseveral tries, able to take some nesteddolls apart by herself, and is ecstatic;

• a group of mothers thinkingcollectively, and through their

discussion, arriving at a new plan ofaction;

• a teacher trying unsuccessfully tointerest children through didacticmethods, having a moment of releaseas she throws out the lesson plan andtries something active, that works;

• illiterate parents discovering theycould explain their programme totrainers and outsiders, and trainersdiscovering that they had somethingimportant to learn from illiterateparents;

• a mother, discovering throughwatching a skilled home visitor, thatshe could also play that role herself.

According to these authors, what makesan situation work hinges on suchmoments of personal significance andpleasure. The success and effectivenessof the programme, or parenting style,or setting, rested on its ability to enablethe people within it to experiencesuccess, pleasure, or new awareness.

On the other hand, 22 stories presentedmore emblematic ‘situations’ such as anoverview of a programme that thewriter considered to be working.Within these accounts too, a rich weaveof interactions between a vast cast of

characters emerges, far more extensivethan one might expect. And in theseaccounts as well, the people areinteracting in ways that seem to ‘carry’the meaning and significance of themoment:

• daycare centre staff planning togetherto help a child to be able to playbetter with peers;

• paediatricians learning to treatchildren as serious partners;

• grandparents in refugee campsproviding the stories, songs anddances that helped recreate a sense ofcommunity; teens in the campslearning to be mentors and teachersfor younger children;

• an programme officer askingquestions of villagers that lead theminto an excited discussion of whattheir children need and how theymight organise themselves to provideit;

• an inter-generational community inwhich the relaxed, child-friendlyatmosphere allows children of allages to be active, find nurturingwhen they need it, and to participatein multiple ways;

• outsiders to a programme discovering

in the course of an evaluation thatthe programme leaders know farmore about what they are doing thanthe outside ‘experts’ would expect;

• professionals learning to findshared language and common terms,through long and sometimespassionate discussion;

• mothers in a rural communitydiscovering that they can collectivelyput together the resources they needin order to provide safe daycare fortheir children away from the fields.

The stories revolve around children ofall ages, mothers, grandparents,fathers, teenagers, preschool teachers,family friends, caregivers, visitors,village leaders, diverse types of groups, planners, governmentrepresentatives, trainers, evaluators,collectives and unions, andinternational non-governmentalorganisation () representatives,health workers, and even horses, cats,toys, and dolls.

Training for whom?

The word ‘training’ showed up in six ofthe stories, and referred in most cases to

preparation for a preschool teacher ordaycare provider. But another ghostlyform of training emerged as a theme:the need for all people involved incaring for children and living within thechild’s sphere to learn to understand,respect, respond, and work effectivelywith each other.

Several stories highlighted the need forall people living within the child’ssphere to understand about the culture,the community context, and the workand economic factors that affectchildren, as well as about ‘childdevelopment’.

With such a wealth of people who aresignificant to situations that work, theconcept of ‘training’ needs to belooked at far more broadly than itoften is. The question of ‘training forwhom?’ is brought up indirectly inseveral stories: as the outside expertdiscovers she does not know as muchas the ‘untrained’ people whoorganised the programme; as itbecomes apparent that both theparents and the staff of a preschoolcentre need to learn more about eachother; and as professional trainers of

trainers are confronted with their lackof experience with illiterate parentsand other grass-roots level programmeparticipants. As one author wrote in atale of what didn’t work:

This was not working. By talking withthe women a childcare option wasevolving. When others (the maleorganisers there to work with thehusbands) stepped in and lectured,the real needs were trampled on aswere the ideas and solutions that werecoming from the people! ()

If the visiting was to be effectivein that situation, it had to go beyondthinking about how to support thewomen and provide them withtraining; it also needed to provideconsciousness-raising to its own staffand to the men in the villages, and totrain itself to navigate more skilfully ina situation where existing genderinequities are easily activated.

In many of the situations that worked,the holistic nature of the setting andthe inter-generational population ofthe programme means that staff arecalled upon to play multiple roles, and


to interact with many different kinds of people:

Twenty children aged two months to twelveyears are playing in three different groups,and parents, men and women (three ofthem are breastfeeding), are seated on thebenches, the floor of Ko Miguel’s bamboohut, on the ground, listening to the (’s)child development worker who isintroducing the day’s activity – it’s anactivity about herbal cures for theirchildren’s skin diseases. She had alreadyexplained that some time will also be spentafter to discuss the vegetable gardens andrice production projects. ()

This is an programme that ranges farbeyond the subject matter of childdevelopment and child health. One pointthat is implied by this writer and others isthat a setting for does cover moreground than just what happens for youngchildren. Training and support for such asetting must match such an expanded vision.

Thus, in the Yacambu villages cited earlier,when the Peasants’ Association asked fortraining from a representative of theMinistry of Education:

They wanted some training for these mothers,(and) other adults, in order to upgrade theirability to teach properly their kids. They alsowanted that this training would fit the localcontext (curriculum). ()

Training that would fit local context neededto go beyond child developmentinformation. It needed to mesh with therealities of the setting (the place was hard toget to), the strengths of the programme (itwas organised and run by a very strongpeasant’s association), the training needs ofthe people who were involved (the mothershad little or no education, but had plenty ofexpertise in advocating on behalf of theirchildren and working collectively), theculture of the people, and the home-basedcurriculum that had already beenestablished.

Insiders/outsiders and intervention

Fifteen of the storytellers told their stories asinsiders; they were participants with a clearrole in the situations they described orthey reached back to their personal

experiences as parents and workers in

settings. Fourteen storytellers told theirstories as outsiders; they werevisitors or observers, some ofthem on the scene in orderto evaluate, make fundingdecisions, or providetraining and resourcesat a later date. Sixwere invisiblenarrators – thesituation wasdescribed withfamiliarity, butthe narrator wasnot present as aparticipant orobserver.

Cameroon: working while breastfeedingphoto copyright Jan Stegeman


But despite this rather evendistribution of insider and outsidernarratives, the group of people whoparticipated in the study are mostlyprofessionals who work at s, sand donor organisations to helppromote and plan or financeprogramming. Thus they areprofessional outsiders much of thetime, and the whole topic ofintervention – the role of outsiders increating programmes; the programmeplanning dialogues betweenintervention agents and communitymembers; the differing agendas ofbeneficiaries, programmeimplementers, programme planners,and outsiders – is woven in and out ofthe stories.

The following six excerpts fromaccounts of effective programmes (orintervention moments in the first twocases) illustrate the range ofintervention stances or roles ofoutsiders that emerged through thestories. In these examples, theintervention agent acted with variousamounts of involvement as:facilitator/listener; animator/activator;resource person/ responder to

community requests; funder who helpsshape the programme’s agenda;programme provider/seed-moneyfunder; programme planner/designer.

Facilitator/listener

A women’s organiser was hired (inNorthern Pakistan) to begin to focuson women’s needs. On one trip Iaccompanied the women’s organiserto several villages where we sat withthe women, heard about their lives,and talked with them about theirproblems. Eventually they talkedabout issues related to childcare. Thewomen work in neighbouring fieldsand during the planting andharvesting season, in particular, theyare away from home for most of theday. They sometimes bring childrenalong, but this slows them down.Sometimes, a few admitted, they leavethe children home alone. This worriesthem and they feel pulled betweengetting their work done and caring forthe children.

We began to talk about how thisproblem might be solved. When theidea of having an informal childcare

set up in the village was suggested,they immediately began to thinkabout how that might be organised.They thought of a woman who wouldbe an excellent one to care for thechildren. Someone else offered herhouse since she has a large verandaand a place for the children to play.And the discussion went on … ()

In this example, the intervention agent(a visiting programme officer)aims to take a back seat, describing herrole as sitting with the women, hearingabout their lives and talking with themabout their problems. The seed of aprogramme appears as a suggestion,perhaps from the visitor and perhapsfrom one of the women themselves.But the focus of the tale is theengagement of the women themselvesas they think of who, how, and in whatways the programme could be formed,using their existing resources.

The implication of this example is thatwhat is working is the women’s abilityto both identify and decide how toaddress their problems, when given anopportunity to do so.


Animator/activator

Explaining to a group of teachers fromhill-tribe communities (in Thailand)how to translate knowledge andexperience into an programme.They have no outside exposure to suchprogrammes; do not know how toarticulate needs or how to imaginepossibilities beyond their everydayreality. I started speaking at lengthabout the pictures of children andfamilies they presented to me; that earlychildhood is not just about a preschoolbuilding with trained teachers inside.They have clear ideals about howchildren should be (like the dog, like thestone, and so on). They have a strongdesire to knit the generations back intoa whole but feel that the youth have dropped out ofthe community as well as out of school.

I discussed how a programme can try toknit the generations back together (childto child, elders and children, newmothers and experienced mothers,adolescents and life skills). How todevise activities to make childrenresourceful (like the dog) and strong

(like the stone). I used the knowledgethey gave me, and put it into someprogramme ‘frameworks’ that I havelearned from other partners. Finally alook of comprehension was coming intotheir eyes, questions came out, teachersstarted discussing spontaneously witheach other. ()

The key phrase in this example is ‘I usedthe knowledge they gave me’, but in fact,the visitor (another programmeofficer), plays a much more pro-activerole, instructing and informing thecommunity, while working from picturesthey supply and the stories they tellabout them. A similar result as in theprevious example is highlighted asimportant: ‘teachers start discussingspontaneously with each other’.

Resource person/funder

I visited Yacambu in 1995 as NationalDirector of Preschool Education for theMinistry of Education … When I wasthere, the peasant association leadersasked me about three problems: 1. they needed a place to continue,because their own houses cannot beused in crop season.

2. They needed some money for (a)student, so she can be there beyond the academic year. They also wanted some payment for the‘teacher-mother’.3. They wanted some training for these mothers, (and) other adults,in order to upgrade their ability toteach properly their kids. They also wanted that this training would fit the local context(curriculum). ()

In this example, the community hasalready held its discussions, presumablywithout the need for an outsidefacilitator/animator, and has identifiedwhat it needs. So the role of theintervention agent, in this case agovernment representative, is to fundwhat needs to be funded. In this story itis clear that the government agent in factsupported the programme plans aspresented, and thus played the role ofresource supplier.

Funder who helps shape the programme’sagenda

The women’s group began to contactother organisations for assistance, both

financial and pedagogical … To fundthe teacher’s salaries and operations,they relied on their own resources anddonor funding (an international ).Concerned about the sustainability ofthe programme, the helped fund arevolving loan fund for incomegenerating activities, whose profitswould be reinvested in the preschool.()

Within this excerpt, initiative has alsocome from the community. However, thedonor organisation plays a more activerole in shaping the programme, byintroducing its own concerns aboutsustainability. In a number of the stories,the donor-introduced agenda ofsustainability is mentioned. In thisaccount, the storyteller tells us that it isin fact doubtful that the programme wasable to become self-sustaining, since theincome-generating aspect of theprogramme was not particularlysuccessful.

One might be tempted to attribute thislack of sustainability to the fact that itwas a donor-introduced concern. And itis true that those programmes that aredescribed as having ‘spread’ (implying


grass roots replication) also seem tohave taken root in their contexts.However, the following example, with adonor-introduced concern forsustainability, claims more success withlongevity.

Programme provider/seed-money funder

In one hotel ballroom (used forrefugees in war-torn Croatia) we finda couple of displaced Ph.D., severalteachers, nurses. Out of the chaos, themisery of displaced status, it becomespossible to develop a recognisablepreschool activity. Women … beganto take charge of their new context.Preschool groups became organised –associations formed. The principle,applied first successfully on theCroatian Coast, could be carriedforward into Bosnia and beyond …Associations could be supported andcould learn to generate their ownresources for their own future. 60,000children and 60% of the centres stillstand five years later. ()

It is possible that because thisprogramme activated preschools in a

place where kindergartens existedbefore the war, and built on talentsalready present within the group, therewas a strong basis for sustainability. Inother words, ownership of the idea wasimplicit in the setting, so it did notfunction as a donor-overlay. In thisexample, while the donor is activatingtalents found within the group, boththe initiative for forming preschoolsand seed funding for implementation isprovided by the ‘outsider’ .

Programme planner/designer

In 1991, I was part of an initiativeintended to respond to psycho-socialneeds of Mozambican refugee childrenliving in camps in Malawi andZimbabwe. Following a series of visitsto generate a situation analysis, weconcluded that two of the mostvulnerable populations were preschoolaged children and adolescents …

A programme of early childhood carebased on the model of ‘Escolinhas’(little schools) was introduced …

The actual Ah Ha! experience was

based on watching theintergenerational exchange andrealising that multiple needs werebeing met at one time as the resourcesof each ‘group’ were being drawnupon … Visits with a randomlyselected group of parents, many ofthem single mothers or on their own,

suggested broad support for theproject. ()

In this example, a programme that wasconsidered highly effective was in factplanned by a visiting group of outsiders(accompanied by some insiders) whoassessed the needs, designed the

Brazil: working in our gardenCriança Rural Project


programme, and provided the fundingand training for the local implementers. Inthis situation, the author attributes thesuccess of the programme to the fact thatwhat it provided was an excellent matchfor the people being served – it met theirmultiple needs and drew on the resourcesof each sub-group within the population.

In summary, a range of interventionstyles emerged as effective in this group ofprofessional outsiders’ experience.Questions that emerge as we look at thesestories aren’t answered within theaccounts: how does the interventionagent’s role enhance or detract from theeffectiveness of the project? Under whatconditions is each intervention stancemost effective?

We see from the story of the visitingEducation Minister, that when acommunity’s agenda is fixed orprocessed by the community, provision offunds and services can be an effectiveintervention. On the other hand, in thefirst example, in which women fromPakistan began to shape their concernsand solutions, a coda is added to thestory, turning it into an example of what

doesn’t work. The male organisers, whohad not been part of this effectiveprocess, met with women in twoadditional villages, lectured them aboutwhat the donor would provide (cars andbuildings – this was untrue) anddestroyed both the rapport that had beendeveloped, and the willingness of thewomen to participate. The effort fell apartin the face of offers of funds andresources from outside, and noprogramme could be established.

It is possible to create a grid with ‘whoinitiates’ on the vertical axis (communityinitiation – outsider initiation) and ‘whoprovides the programme’ (communityprovision – outsider provision) on thehorizontal axis, and find successfulprogrammes anywhere within the grid.

Thus, it appears that having a programmeinitiated by the community is notnecessarily the magic ingredient thatmakes a programme successful orvaluable. Instead, the question of whatmakes an programme work appearsto reside partly in the quality of thematch between the following factors:

• needs existing within the community,and what the outsider has identifiedand has to offer in relation to the need;

• needs recognised or identified by thecommunity, and recognition that thiscan be provided by the outsider;

• talents and resources existing within thecommunity, and the ability ofimplementers/insiders and outsiders tobuild on these;

• resources supplied from outside thatmatch community recognised needs;

• sensitivity and skill on the part of theintervention agent, and identified orperceived needs of the insiders;

• a felicitous combination of personalities;• timing – the right idea at the right time;• cultural readiness for the

intervention/activity at the time thatfunding or other resources areavailable.

While it is far too ambitious in the scopeof this small study to try to pin downwhat makes these particular programmeswork, it is possible to look across thedescriptions to get insight into some ofthe factors that were highlighted asimportant.

Watching and listening intently

This theme emerged most directly whenpeople were talking about children, whoare described as ‘watching and listeningintently’. This will be discussed later inmore detail. However, the theme alsoappears as a strong implication in accountsof adults who play an intervention role,who are trainers, and who are visitors to asituation: ‘After a long observation of whatthey were doing I found out that …’ ();‘All the adults of the house, and theadolescent too, were drawn one by oneinto the room where the activities weregoing on and were spellbound by theproceedings … The mother said to me: Itlooks so easy! Even I can do this …’();‘I saw the settling in process applied inpractice …’ (); ‘We were watchingbehind a one-way mirror but quickly feltdrawn into the room’. ()

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One of the examples above (of anintervention situation in NorthernPakistan) also emphasises theimportance of watching and listening.The visitor sat with the mothers,listened to their stories and laterwatched their reactions as the menlectured to them. Through thisobservation, she picked up the cues forwhat her input and contributionsshould be. The accounts of visitorsviewing programmes are full ofobservations made through watching.It becomes apparent that thestorywriters consider it valuable forthem to have time and opportunities tostand apart from the ‘action’ andobserve.

We talked on and on

The focus of the meeting was onnetworking. We were hearing thereports, region by region, of what hadhappened in in various placesand what various organisations hadbeen trying to do… once peoplestarted reporting, the details got richerand richer, and the discussion gotmore animated and engaged. I don’tremember exactly what moment I

said to myself ‘this is working’. I justremember feeling more and moreexcited, as I realised that the work wasjust moving steadily ahead. Sure therewere problems and issues, but youcould see all the willingness and hardwork that had gone into making theregional efforts go forward … ()

The role of talk was highlighted in thestories for two main purposes: 1) as away to create common ground,common understanding betweenpeople within projects and betweenproject people and outsiders, and 2) asa tool in collective problem solving.

There was a differentiation betweentalking to or at someone (lecturing –considered a negative trait), and talkingwith/discussing. In several stories, therewas an effort on the part of thenarrator to impart information in acontext – the visitor to Thailand sharedher programme experience in relationto pictures and explanations that thevillagers themselves had provided.In this way, she avoided preaching orlecturing, and was able instead to share her knowledge in the context of a dialogue.

They thought collectively

In a regional workshop, with a groupof practitioners from several Arabcountries, a long discussion (was held)about which Arabic terms to use asequivalent to ‘care’ and ‘education’,and which of them reflected theirpractice; it was a ‘collective mind’ inoperation, not easily in agreementwith itself, but it worked …

What helped the exercise to ‘work’was a fairly successful ‘facilitation’process, which created a neutral spacefor strongly-minded professionals tointeract passionately but positively.()

Collective mind is significant ineffective discussion and group work –it relates not only to problems beingsolved through a group discussion,but also to a process of integratingdiverse individuals into a sharedunderstanding of problems. It involvescreating a shared language, literally insome of the stories and metaphoricallyin others. It also acts as a springboardfor activism.

… two years after it had started themothers and community of Panguiwere reflecting about their experiencein the ‘Preschool at home’ programmethat had come to an end for them:what they had learned, what thechildren had learned, how thecommunity had improved, how themen were active in improving thesanitation, how they were interactingwith other neighbours. They thoughtcollectively about how to continue theexperience with their own resources.They decided… ()

As several writers pointed out: concernfor children is a motivator for adultactivism:

Then the discussion continued. ‘So,what else do you women do? Just maketoys?’‘No, we do lots of other things. We havegot together to clean away the garbagein the streets. We have built a wall tokeep the river from flooding the village.We have made pig pens. And we haveeven written a letter to the President ofthe Republic telling him that we too arevoters and he had better get a roadbuilt through to this place’


‘And all this in the name of a preschoolprogramme?’‘Yes, sure. We do all this for ourchildren.’

Lesson – women in groups get highlymotivated through engagement withtheir children. The motivation issparked off, but if properly guided, willnot end there. ()

Properly guided

This notion of guidance wafts into theaccounts in the guise of facilitation,donor input, expert participation in‘dialogues’, role modelling and referenceto dynamic community leaders, trainersand others whose role is to help steerdiscussions, help shape programmedesigns, help educate people.

In relation to adults guiding childrenthere are clear techniques set out byseveral writers:

The positive, gradually introduced(encouragement to open up) what hewas doing, while respecting that whathe was doing was fine, made him startto enjoy playing together (with other

children). ()

In other words, with children, it isimportant to start with where they are,introduce new ideas throughencouragement and exposure to newpossibilities, while respecting what thechild does on her/his own. With adults,this same value is implicit in the waysstorywriters described their roles inintervention situations. When anoutsider oversteps the attitude ofguidance-as-a-mutual-exchange, itbecomes a negative feature:

The idea of the session was to have themothers, grandmothers working in thissetting explain what it was all about.So the trainees were given theopportunity to ask questions anddialogue with the women (themajority of them illiterate), to get adescription of what the project wasand why it was good to have it in theirparticular neighbourhood. Most of thetrainers were Trainers of Trainers andhad never really worked directly withparents, let alone illiterate mothers,and at first were lost, as they could notuse the usual techniques they wereaccustomed to and some of them

(were) having difficulty to admit that … ()

In this example, trainers were not usedto being the learners, and were lost in asituation where their guidance was notbeing sought!

They have clear ideals for their children

Just about everyone has ideals forchildren – the parents, the communityleaders, the outsiders who wish tointervene. One way ideals are used is bylistening to parents, and using their ownideals and aspirations for their childrenas a starting point for discussingprogramme options. As the Thailandvisitor mentioned, ‘I discussed how aprogramme can try to knit thegenerations back together … How todevise activities to make childrenresourceful (like the dog) and strong(like the stone).’ She built upon whatthe parents and teachers told her theywanted for their children.

A second way ideals arise is when theoutsider teaches or creates an appetitefor an ideal. For example, a programmeto teach parents of severely-

handicapped infants focuses on havingparents learn how to interact with theirchildren in simple and non-verbal ways,and then practice that interaction, untilthe rewards create a strong appetite andvalue for communication.

This very small interaction continuesfor 4-5 minutes and then the boy turnshis head very slowly towards his fatherand gives him a broad smile – the firstsmile ever! (he is about 12 months old!and severely disabled). The father’sand observing mother’s/staff ’shappiness cannot be described … ()

There is hesitation on the part ofstorytellers to discuss the ‘values’ and‘ideals’ they are in fact trying tointroduce when they act as interventionagents. Yet glimpses of such activityappear: in situations where outsiders aretrying to strengthen the roles andpowers of women within cultures thatdon't value women’s autonomy; insituations where donors askprogrammes to include elements aimedat making them sustainable; inprogrammes where preschool isintroduced as an organising factor fordisrupted communities, when may


still be an acquired taste for thosecommunities.

This hesitation to discuss ’sideals, funders’ ideals, and evengovernment and private sector’s idealsfor children directly, makes it difficultto identify how these imported orhighlighted values influence whathappens within settings. Yet therewere clear indications throughout thestories that outsider-defined ideals,cultural practices, curricular practicesand beliefs about child-rearing, all

play a role in what is happeningwithin these programmes. Sometimesthat role is positive, sometimesdisruptive, and often mixed.

It would be useful to focus on thequestion of ‘whose ideals and values’have been adopted and integratedinto the formation and evolution ofeffective programmes. Whatdifference does it make if aprogramme is built on people’straditional values or if, in fact, aprogramme strives to introduce ‘new’values and ideals?

Community participation, communitycommitment

The majority of stories that focussedon programmes, group settings, andcommunity settings mentionedcommunity participation as a markerof a programme’s success. A sub-text,though, is that parents andcommunities are not justparticipating; they are committed tothe programmes, they are active, andthey ultimately take ownership.Participation is variously spelled out as:

Community participation in themanagement of the school, runningall the way from food preparation topaying teachers’ salaries, tophysically constructing the schoolitself, to fund-raising, to startingagro/animal husbandry projects, tosupport the school. ()

They got training and had aneducation student to visit and planevery week. They also gatheredmoney to buy food for children’sbreakfast and lunch … They

mobilised private enterprises, localgovernment and they were trying toget a broader support fromuniversities and nationalgovernment. ()

The methodology was veryparticipatory. Mothers had theopportunity to share theirexperiences and reflect about howthey were raising their children,their own attitudes and beliefs, andhow to use resources of theenvironment in a more productiveway for the benefit of their children,families, and community. ()

In these stories, parents areidentifying their own needs –sometimes at the instigation ofdynamic community leaders, or inresponse to outside facilitators – andare identifying resources they can tapamongst themselves, and resourcesthey can pursue in the local, regional,and national infrastructure. Theyorganise themselves and others, theyset conditions, in some cases, on thehelp they do receive – refusingsupport that deflects them from their

Botswana: sibling careKuru Development Trust


purposes. There is a balance in the stories betweendefining community participation as response, asactivism, and as initiation.

They explained

What is set out as an ultimate ideal of communitycommitment is that community members have takenownership of a programme. One key marker for this inmany stories was the fact that community members andparticipants in the programmes could explain what theywere doing with and for children, and why they did whatthey did, and could articulate for others what that meantin terms of children’s development.

And what came out was that those illiterate womenwere actually explaining basic early (childhood)concepts in simple words to the trainers. For theorganisers of the workshop (myself included) this littledialogue … was a clear indication that the project themothers were running … was working, as they couldexplain the project and what they felt about it. Theirwords showed that they had taken ownership of theproject. ()

One important thing is that they (the communityparents/organisers) used every chance to promote theirproject, like an international meeting of coffee growersin Costa Rica … These people have just been invited tointernational meetings to present their project. ()

They used their own resources

The goal of sustainability, as mentioned earlier, appearedin the stories as a donor-driven goal with only moderatesuccess. One notable exception was a programme thatwas ending, which women decided to continue on theirown:

They thought collectively about how to continue theexperience with their own resources. They decided to builda centre where children could spend three hours a day,and the community could meet. Someone donated a pieceof land, every person in the meeting committed herself toparticipating in the construction: clearing the land, gettingthe sand, the wood and other materials. ()

This form of community ownership takes the discussionfull circle to the question of community commitment. Asoutsiders, the donor community tends to stress outcomemarkers to measure the success of a programme:programme longevity and community take-over ofprogramme maintenance are considered primary goals towork toward. But in several of the stories, other equallyvalued dimensions of programme effectiveness wereevident at the beginning: the community recognised aneed and activated itself; the community responded toopportunities offered by a visitor; the communityparticipated, had meaningful experiences along the way,and changed its ways of taking care of children because ofwhat it learned, even in the course of a short-term

project. How can these process-related ‘successes’ befactored into our understanding of effectiveness?

In the following section, we look at what the ‘insider’and

• difficulty playing together

• on his own

• he would feel lost

• show difficult behaviour

• staff started to sit him in the group

• would ask him

• what he would like to do

• his preferred toy

• would be offered

• gradually (this took some time)

• stayed at the table with other children

• staff started to make positive references

• about what he was doing

• involving both my son and other children

• this stimulated him

• made him proud

• show what he’d done

• the next step (steps in process)

• ask him to teach other children

• how to make a puzzle

• slowly he began to see

• it was fun

• doing things together


event-focussed stories tell us about theimpact and growth and success ofindividual moments that worked,individual interactions that created anopening, and individual experiencesthat stayed with the storyteller andwere formative in the choices theymake as parents and professionals.

Experiences of, with, and for children

Adults planning for children’s success

My son had difficulty in playingtogether with other children. On hisown he would be fine but with othershe would feel lost and started to showdifficult behaviour …

The daycare centre staff started to sithim in the group and asked him whathe would like to do. His preferred toywould be offered. Gradually (this tooksome time, but at least he stayed at thetable with other children) the staffstarted to make references in a positiveway about what he was doing –involving both my son and otherchildren. This stimulated him andmade him proud to show what he’ddone. The next step was to ask him to

‘teach’ other children how to make apuzzle. Slowly he began to see that itwas fun doing things together. ()

This is an excerpt from a story about atwo and a half year old boy in a daycaresetting that we used in one of theworkshops for our group discussion.Even at first glimpse, it is rich and fullof themes:

The story brought up discussion ofmany aspects faced by young childrenin care settings, including the planningthat these teachers carried out in orderto provide a consistent experience forthe child, the opportunities andlearning it involved for him, andultimately the pride and engagementthat resulted as the plan was carriedout successfully over a period of aboutsix weeks.

Each of these themes is worthy ofexploration in its own right. Forexample, the theme ‘He would feel lost’– what is it that makes children feellost, compared with feeling ‘found’?And what can adults, other children,and environments do to help childrenfind anchors?

However, after the workshop group hadgiven much consideration to the factorsthat emerged as part of an effectivemoment for her son, the motherconfessed that although she had chosenthe moment as a particularly effectiveone, what had not emerged in her storywas the ambivalence she felt. Did a twoand a half year old boy need to playtogether with other children? Would he

have done better to just play on his own until he hadoutgrown his discomfort with others? Was his negativebehaviour perhaps a signal that he shouldn’t be in such alarge group setting at all?

This ambivalence, between admiring the planning and skillwith which her child was helped to adapt to a situation,and wondering whether the goals for him were imposed,brought up a whole discussion of adults’ expectations ofand goals for children. What is the healthiest and ‘best’experience for the child in a setting, and what are the bestand healthiest settings that are possible for each child?

The stories addressed these questions on many levels, byidentifying elements of the experience for children andadults in settings, and by bringing up resonantmoments that stayed with the story writers from their ownchildhood or their children’s early years.

Several storywriters identified planning and organisationas the reasons why settings for children worked. Theyadmired the well established routines that allowed childrento feel safe, to interact without chaos or conflict. Smoothbehaviours were cited as evidence in several stories thatthis was a well conceived and well designed setting, andthe absence of difficult behaviours (crying, clinging, andfights among children) was identified as evidence thatchildren were getting their needs met. On the other hand,one writer spoke of ‘busy noise’ as a sign that this was avital and quality setting for children.

Kodakistan, Pakistan: comfort in a daycare centre


Consider some of the following ‘markers’ of asuccessful setting, as presented within the stories:

Three infants were asleep in the hammock … andlooked clean and fed … Five or six toddlers were in a small circle …There were about ten children 4-6 years of agelistening to a story. One or two children werehelping the caregiver with her task of getting themid-morning snack ready. One child – a boy –was in a corner with a doll in his lap, very quiet,just hugging the doll. There was some freemovement and some conversation among thechildren, but there was no shouting. Noinstruction was given to the children to be quiet.()

They (a multi-age group of children) were busyplaying, listening to stories from the grandmothers,and once in a while mothers would come in tobreastfeed. It was all done in a very natural andchild friendly way. The parents bring water andfire wood each morning, and the project makessure the children get a meal of porridge. Whentimes are good and there is a lot of milk, parentsalso bring extra milk for the children. ()

Nidi and Suresh are in the market learning areausing stones as weights to buy potatoes. As Nidiand Suresh choose and discard stones to create abalance for the tower of potatoes, Saibu, the

student teacher, observes the process – the processof Nidi mentoring Suresh, learning about heavyand heavier, using play as a learning tool, and thequiet yet intense concentration of other children asthey collaboratively succeeded in balancing thescale, and then take great delight in knocking allthe potatoes off the scale. ()

Peru: today I’ll build with tins, tomorrow with barrelsAte-Vitarte II Project


Two of the three examples focus oncentre-based care; the middle examplemight be called ‘village-based’ care; allthree are situations where children areliving in poverty. Thus it is no surprisethat the health and care aspects ofchildren are highlighted (as they are inseveral other stories): children are cleanand fed, often with snacks or mealsprovided by the programme, and whenpossible brought in by the parents. Ifthey are younger children, motherscome in to breastfeed. In the firstexample, the writer goes on to explainthat children and their clothes arewashed when they arrive at the centre,if they need it.

Breastfeeding is mentioned throughoutthe stories, both from a nutritionperspective, and as a way the youngestchildren are getting nurtured. Otherforms of nurture arise: a boy iscuddling a doll, a young child playingwith a grown-up sits in her lap whileexploring a new toy, a three year oldwhose mother is giving birth to ayounger sibling is given the role of‘chief cuddler’ to support her motherand be part of the experience.

These successful settings have a balanceof interaction and quiet activity.Children are gathered in circles forsinging, playing games, listening tostories; children are off in cornersplaying quietly, or alone, hugging adoll. In all three excerpts, and in otherstories as well, children have freedomof movement. They are not restrictedto desks or expected to sit in one place.

Play is highlighted as the primary taskchildren engage in; in fact it is notablethat little direct teaching appears in theaccounts. The settings these authorsselected are ones in which childrenlearn through exploration, interaction,and doing. They are playing withpotatoes, stones, toys, dolls, countingtoys, puzzles, and other materials thatcan be manipulated and used in role-play. One author highlighted role-playas a particularly important element forher. ‘One of the things that worked formyself as a child and in being a teacherhas been role play … Being able toexpress things through ‘somebody’ hasgiven (me) room to showing feelingsand emotions in a non-threateningway.’ (bb)

Watching and listening intently

As mentioned earlier, watching andlistening play a strong role in most ofthe stories. For children, watching is aform of learning:

A male teacher had an infant on hiship while he was helping twopreschoolers with a building task at atable. The infant was watching the

two children intensely and listening tothem. (Much more interesting than amobile designed specifically forinfants). ()

The emphasis on children watchingand learning from older children, andbeing able to move in and out of the‘action’, is as strong in the stories as theemphasis on active learning. Thiswatching and listening activity takesplace in the context of descriptionsauthors give of rich environments –where children and adults of all agesare gathered, where multiple levels ofactivity are going on, and children havethe freedom to move in and out. Thusthis mode of learning may beparticularly tied to situations thatprovide such a rich and ‘holistic’environment for children. In theexample of the two and a half year oldboy having trouble playing with peersin the daycare centre, cited at thebeginning of our discussion ofchildren, there does not appear to bemuch room for the child to watch andlisten and find his place among hispeers over time; and that is possibly theroot of the mother’s ambivalence aboutthe teachers’ well-planned technique,


despite its success.

One story, in which the writer never directly stateswhy he has chosen this as an example of a momentthat is working, sketches this form of richenvironment learning in a cinematic way:

Two very small girls – maybe three years old – showup … They walk through the activities, sometimesasking questions (usually of each other) and oftenlaugh. After a while they stroll away. Later, I seethem sitting in the middle of a field, talking earnestlytogether … When the preschool takes a break, theyjoin a group of children who are making a dam in adrainage ditch … At lunch time we find them sittingon the knees of two of the village grandmas, talkingwith them … ()

In this account, we see a form of ‘active learning’ thatis not engineered; the village itself offers the learningareas, and there is little adult guidance or effort tomake each activity ‘developmentally appropriate’. Theprevalence of this phenomenon in the stories bringsup some questions, which might be fruitful toexplore: what do watching and listening offer to achild, in the overall learning process? Whatopportunities for watching and listening are availablewithin a child’s care situation? To what extent does aprogramme strive to provide a ‘rich environment’approach, and to what extent does it focus onplanned learning?

Something familiar, something new

A good deal of attention is given to how adultssupport children, both in their transitions into thecare setting, in learning new things, and in situationsof change, such as the birth of a new sibling.

Days before, Lina and her two friends had spoken atlength about how to include (three year old) Juanitaand make the experience positive … the adultsconcluded that participation without fear for hermother’s well-being was the goal … The two friends,whom she knew well, prepared (her) with games andactivity, including forays outside to see friends andneighbours … Juanita had talked constantly aboutthe birth and new baby for weeks … but althoughcurious, was not insistent about being present at themoment of the birth. She knew enough to be cautious…

(The whole experience) was joyous. Each person hada role. The three year old was informed and engaged,but not overwhelmed. Her impulse – to cling to hermother – was anticipated and validated. Hercommunity was there to support her, direct her, andreinforce her role as a child who could explore, walk,play, talk, share with friends, help her mother, andeven help her new sibling. ()

In this experience, the adults have planned together tocreate a role for Juanita, to help her know what toexpect, to make sure she has familiar toys and peoplearound her, and most important, to make sure shehas a clear role in her family’s change.

The line between home and the school or care settingis more blurry than you might expect; the themesapparent in helping a child at home cope with thebirth of her sister emerge as well in a story about atransition into preschool:

In Hungary, there is about a two week period (called‘settling in’ period) for each child when the motheror any other family members can come and be withthe child at the centre … During the first days, themother does all the caregiving routines (washinghands, diapering or toileting, and so on) and thecaregiver just observes and assists … Later, as thechild grows more confident, the caregiver takes overthese tasks … It is considered to be one of the‘turning points’ (or first signs of settling in) when thechild allows the caregiver to wash him or to feed him.()

Printed on recycled paper

The Bernard van Leer Foundation is a private

foundation based in The Netherlands. It operates

internationally, concentrating its resources on early

childhood development.

The Foundation's income is derived from the bequest

of Bernard van Leer (1883 -1958), a Dutch industrialist

and philanthropist who, in 1919, founded an

industrial and consumer packaging company that was

to become Royal Packaging Industries Van Leer NV.

During his lifetime Bernard van Leer supported a

broad range of humanitarian causes. In 1949, he

created the Bernard van Leer Foundation, to channel

the revenues from his fortune to charitable purposes

after his death. When he died in 1958, the Foundation

became the beneficiary of the entire share capital of

the then privately owned Van Leer enterprise and

other assets.

Under the leadership of his son Oscar van Leer, who

died in 1996, the Foundation focused on enhancing

opportunities for children growing up in

circumstances of social and economic disadvantage

to optimally develop their innate potential.

In seeking to achieve this objective, the Foundation

has chosen to concentrate on children from 0-7 years

of age. This is because scientific findings have

demonstrated that interventions in the early years of

childhood are most effective in yielding lasting

benefits to children and society.

The Foundation accomplishes its objective through

two interconnected strategies:

1 an international grantmaking programme in

selected countries aimed at developing

contextually appropriate approaches to early

childhood care and development; and

2 the sharing of knowledge and know-how in the

domain of early childhood development that

primarily draws on the experiences generated

by the projects that the Foundation supports, with

the aim of informing and influencing policy

and practice.

A leaflet giving fuller details of the Foundation and its

grantmaking policy is available, as is a Publications

List. Please contact the Department of Programme

Documentation and Communication, at the addresses

given on the back cover.

Trustees:

I Samrén, Chairman,

Mrs MC Benton, JL Brentjens, R Freudenberg,

J Kremers, HB van Liemt, A Mar-Haim,

JK Pearlman, PJJ Rich.

Executive Director:

Rien van Gendt.

About the Bernard van Leer FoundationKenya: mothers supporting their childrenChildren of Kiwanja Kimaye Child Development Project

The_Effectiveness_Initiative

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