Ecuador – Professionalizing the Workforce Supporting Infants and Toddlers from Birth to 3:  Highlights the government of Ecuador’s approach to professionalizing childcare center and home visiting workers with pre- and in-service training that emphasizes theoretical knowledge and practical skills. Download the brief.

Georgia – Training Early Childhood Intervention Workers to Close a Workforce Gap: Examines the development and implementation of a pre-and in-service training program for the early childhood intervention (ECI) workforce and the creation of accreditation mechanisms for building the capacity of ECI services. Download the brief.

Ghana – Bridging Access with Quality: Explores the Fast Track Transformational Teaching (FTTT) Program’s approach to enhancing pre-and in-service training that improves kindergarten teachers’ practical skills and ability to implement the national play-based kindergarten curriculum. Download the brief.

Kenya – Empowering Community Health Volunteers to Integrate Nurturing Care: Examines Siaya County’s approach to integrating nurturing care into the work of Community Health Volunteers by providing them with ongoing support and better recognition. Download the brief.

Philippines – Combining Training with Job Security to Improve the Quality of the Childcare Workforce: Analyzes nationally supported training efforts to improve the knowledge and skills of personnel, as well as local efforts to address working conditions and job security. Download the brief.

Singapore – Developing Career Pathways for Early Childhood Care and Education Workers: Highlights the Government of Singapore’s efforts to support career advancement in the early childhood care and education profession by creating and investing in competency-based trainings, professional development frameworks, and career pathways. Download the brief.

These country briefs revealed a number of lessons about how policymakers and practitioners may strengthen the ECD workforce, including the following:

Standardizing competency requirements and pre-service training is an essential way of assessing prior knowledge and practical experience.
Introducing a competency-based approach to training reduces the likelihood of staff members entering the profession without the requisite skills and creates opportunities for existing workers to evolve in their roles over time.

Complementing pre-and in-service training with monitoring and mentoring is an effective way to sustain workforce improvement efforts.
Combining trainings with ongoing support helps bridge the gap between knowledge and skills and allows ECD workers to effectively and regularly apply the knowledge they have obtained into their roles.

Creating new entry points to the profession and flexible training pathways can allow workers with limited formal education and training to join the early childhood profession and gain the requisite skills.
Recruiting non-traditional workers and providing existing members of the workforce with flexible training options (e.g distance learning) helps diversify the workforce and increase the skill sets of existing ECD personnel.

Sensitizing officials to the working conditions of the ECD workforce can lead to the development of policies that improve the status of these workers and increase the sustainability of these efforts.
Providing officials with data on the composition of the workforce and exposure to the challenges they face can reinforce the importance of prioritizing funding and initiatives to support these personnel. Creating champions can help ensure that ECD is a priority in different contexts and enacting new ECD legislation at the local and national level can help ensure that efforts do not cease once new leaders are elected.

The post Supporting the Early Childhood Workforce: Spotlight on 6 Countries appeared first on Results for Development.

The compendium is informed by desk reviews and information collected through key informant interviews with country experts from implementing NGOs, multilaterals and research institutions, as well as program managers and government officials from 15 countries. After identifying six promising country approaches to highlight, researchers conducted further desk research and interviews to identify key enablers and barriers to implementation.

In addition to highlighting efforts to support the workforce across a variety of geographies and services the briefs share lessons about how policymakers and practitioners can strengthen the early childhood workforce.

“The challenges facing the early childhood workforce — limited access to professional development, difficult working conditions, lack of career pathways — are remarkably similar across countries. Yet, we don’t know very much about how to address them. That’s why we’re excited to share how six countries are tackling common workforce development issues. We hope that the practical examples and potential lessons in each brief will help policymakers and practitioners overcome related obstacles in their own countries,” says Michelle Neuman, a senior fellow at Results for Development and author of Developing Career Pathways for Early Childhood Care and Education Workers.

These briefs are part of a body of work produced by the Early Childhood Workforce Initiative — offering insights into country priorities around the early childhood workforce and spotlighting approaches used to support this workforce. Find more research contributing to the understanding of the early childhood workforce across the globe here.

###

About the Early Childhood Workforce Initiative
The Early Childhood Workforce Initiative focuses on the country system and policy level to support and empower those who work with families and children under age 8 (e.g. home visitors, preschool staff, community health workers), as well as those who supervise and mentor practitioners (e.g. supervisors, mentors and coaches, trainers). This initiative takes a holistic, multi-sectoral approach to bridge gaps in policy and practice and promote high quality, equitable services. This initiative is co-hosted by the International Step by Step Association (ISSA) and Results for Development.

About Results for Development
Results for Development (R4D) is a leading non-profit global development partner. We collaborate with change agents around the world — government officials, civil society leaders and social innovators — to create strong systems that support healthy, educated people. We help our partners move from knowing their goal to knowing how to reach it. We combine global expertise in health, education and nutrition with analytic rigor, practical support for decision-making and implementation and access to peer problem-solving networks. Together with our partners, we build self-sustaining systems that serve everyone and deliver lasting results. Then we share what we learn so others can achieve results for development, too. For more information, visit our website at: www.r4d.org.

The post 6 Country Briefs Detail Practices Supporting the Early Childhood Workforce appeared first on Results for Development.

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

The post ECWI: Four Challenges Facing the Early Childhood Workforce appeared first on Results for Development.

Colleen is a program officer at Results for Development (R4D) supporting the health portfolio in projects across the Evaluation and Adaptive Learning and Collaborative Learning practices. Currently, Colleen provides technical and programmatic support to the Linked Immunization Action Network, including leading the Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning work stream.

Colleen was co-investigator of a sequential explanatory study of intimate partner violence (IPV) among Colombian refugees in Ecuadorian border communities, which explored how displacement exacerbates IPV. Findings were published in BMC’s Conflict and Health and presented at the 2020 American Public Health Association Annual Meeting.

Before joining R4D, Colleen served as the program manager for the Secretariat of the Primary Health Care Performance Initiative (PHCPI), a global initiative which supported Ministries of Health and other stakeholders in the evaluation and improvement of primary health care systems. At PHCPI, Colleen led the Secretariat in project management and operations, including grants management and event planning. Prior to PHCPI, Colleen was based in southeastern Madagascar as monitoring and evaluation specialist where she led research and evaluation for an adolescent sexual health project.

Colleen holds a master’s degree in reproductive and sexual health research from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a BA in international relations from Boston University. She is a native English speaker and speaks proficient Spanish.

The post Colleen Keating appeared first on Results for Development.

Project: Leveraging Transparency to Reduce Corruption in the Natural Resource Industries

Learn More

We believe two main variables will shape the future of mining in Latin America in the context of the global energy transition. First, most countries in the region face persistent conflicts over natural resource governance, including opposition to mining projects based on environmental impacts, insufficient consultation with affected communities, and inequitable distribution of socioeconomic benefits. Governments have struggled to meaningfully respond to civil society and community concerns and reduce conflict as they face competing pressures, fractured legislatures, and a cacophony of views on mining. These challenges are not impossible to solve through sustained effort and good policy, but it is unclear whether or how governments will be able to address them and, by extension, how overall levels of conflict around mining will evolve.

The second major variable is uncertainty about future demand for the four critical minerals. While demand will almost inevitably grow, it is uncertain by how much. Governments will need to remain flexible to avoid overinvestment that does not maximize benefits. Demand trajectories are likely to be affected by four key factors: the pace of the energy transition, technological developments, improvements in recycling, and domestic mineral development in the EU and United States.

A best-case scenario would see critical minerals driving a sustainable development boom in Latin America. Conversely, in a worst-case scenario, protracted conflict around mining could undermine political and economic stability. This would also have negative knock-on implications for the global energy transition, increasing the risks of supply disruptions and exacerbating environmental, social, and governance impacts associated with developing the mineral resources needed for clean energy technologies.

This paper first describes three areas of natural resource governance that have been central to political and social conflict over the region’s mining sector: environmental impacts, consultation with affected communities, and distribution of socioeconomic benefits. It then goes on to explore uncertainties about future demand for critical minerals. Finally, it lays out four potential scenarios for the future of mining in Latin America in the next 10 to 20 years, considering both the level of conflict and the level of demand for critical minerals.

The post The Future of Mining in Latin America: Critical Minerals and the Global Energy Transition appeared first on Results for Development.

Mr. Kaddar has worked for thirteen years in the World Health Organization (WHO) focusing on health services and immunization program costing and financing, vaccine manufacturing, procurement, financing, and pricing. He has conducted training, technical assistance, and operational research activities in health system development, transition and sustainability challenges, private sector development, institutional development and capacity building, project and program design and evaluation.

Highlights of his career include:

• As a member of the GAVI immunization financing and the health system strengthening task teams, he advised multilateral organizations on global policies and processes, developed guidelines and tools, and provided support to regions and countries in health system strengthening, immunization planning, costing, financing and health system and program performance and evaluation.
• As an initiator and leader at WHO-HQ of the Vaccine Product, Price and Procurement (V3P) project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, he coordinated activities with partners and countries and oversaw the development of an online information platform on vaccine product, price, and procurement information.
• In Morocco, he served as senior technical adviser to the ministry of health and led the project on decentralization and health system financing and management reforms
• As senior health economist for the Partnerships for Health Reform (PHR) project with Abt Associates, he designed, conducted, and managed regional training courses and activities on health economics for policymakers and managers in North Africa in coordination with RESSMA (Regional Network on Health Economics and Systems) and WHO-EMRO.
• He led a USAID/PHR special initiative on financing and sustainability issues for childhood immunization programs where he designed, contributed, and managed country case studies and provided advice and technical support to countries and partners on immunization financing.
• At the International Children’s Centre (ICC/CIE-CIDEF) in Paris, France he headed the department of planning and developed overall strategy, performed technical quality control, managed staff, projects, and programs. He conducted policy dialogue with representatives of donors and countries from West and central Africa, Algeria, Tunisia, Lebanon, Jordan, Morocco, Ecuador, Vietnam and Laos.

Mr. Kaddar is member of International Health Economics Association, (IHEA) and the American Association of Public Health (AAPH). He has also been a member of the executive committees of International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR), the African Health Economics and Policy Association (AfHEA) and RESSMA, Regional Health Economics Network.

Mr. Kaddar holds a doctorate in economics from Oran University, Algeria, an MA from the University of Grenoble, France and a public health diploma from University of Nancy, France. A native Arabic speaker, he is also fluent in French and English.

The post Miloud Kaddar appeared first on Results for Development.