[In this blog, R4D’s Vidya Putcha, a senior program officer, and Maggie Gratz, a former education intern, share four overarching takeaways from 43 key informant interviews across 15 countries.]
We know that early childhood personnel — preschool teachers, home visitors, community health workers — are critical in the lives of young children, but who are these workers and how can they be best supported? The Early Childhood Workforce Initiative (ECWI), a global, multi-stakeholder effort, has been working to generate new knowledge and resources to help policymakers and program managers better address these very questions.
To understand country priorities and ongoing efforts around the early childhood workforce, a team from Results for Development and the International Step by Step Association conducted 43 key informant interviews across 15 countries — Bangladesh, Brazil, Cote d’Ivoire, Ecuador, Georgia, Ghana, Jordan, Kenya, Moldova, Peru, Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Zambia — earlier this year. We spoke with 28 country experts from implementing NGOs, multilaterals, and research institutions, and 15 policymakers, including program managers and government officials. This series of interviews helped us identify country priorities, learn about promising approaches, and gauge interest from policymakers and officials in piloting a needs assessment tool for diagnosing gaps and workforce needs.
Countries’ priorities surrounding the early childhood workforce, as well as their main challenges in offering workforce support were unique and context-driven. Nevertheless, we were able to deduce the following four, overarching takeaways from our interviews:
To read the full blog, click here.
Photo © Assistance in Building Afghanistan by Developing Enterprises (ABADE) Program/Sohrab Samanian
