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The post What We Learn newsletter: Autumn 2023 edition appeared first on Jacobs Foundation.

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Expanding measurement of holistic skills: Why, What, How is the title of a GPE Summit side session we will host together with the LEGO Foundation. We will learn what holistic skills are being measured, discuss barriers, and consider how to come together as a community to address them. The event will take place on July 19th at 9 am EST / 3 pm CET. Find out more here.

“Teachers’ stories need to be shared.” In a new BOLD podcast series, educational researcher Nina Alonso shares powerful stories from teachers around the world, as well as insights from experts on learning and development.

FROM ACROSS OUR NETWORK

Growing the evidence: Schools2030 and the Jacobs Foundation have partnered to find ‘what works’ for quality learning, with the goal to adapt and scale education innovations globally. Read more

What helps against loneliness? A new study by the University of Cambridge will seek answers to this question by investigating the mental health trajectories of adolescents and adults around the world during the COVID-19 pandemic.

OUR INSIGHTS

Can Co-Leadership be the future of philanthropy? How can we re-think our organizational structures and decision-making mechanisms to meet the challenges of the future? We had the opportunity to reflect on these questions and our experience with Co-Leadership in a newly published piece in Alliance magazine. Let us know what you think!

What we are reading:

• Pathways towards quality primary education: Improving completion and learning outcomes
• New evidence on learning trajectories in a low-income setting
• The effectiveness of technology-supported personalized learning in low- and middle-income countries
• Four steps for humanizing personalized learning
• What does a common agenda for global public goods in education look like?

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Disseminating research-based information about child development requires a multi-pronged and strategic communication approach. Research shows that naming characters in infants’ books promotes learning in the first year of life. We created a public service announcement (PSA) to communicate to parents and caregivers to read early and often and to “Read the Right Books at the Right Time.” Our strategic approach incorporates expertise from scientific studies of infant development, communicating science through entertainment and journalism, and promoting policies that support families and children.

Research: Scientific Studies of Infant Development. Parents and caregivers support infant development in a variety of ways including during shared book reading. Shared book reading has broad developmental benefits for child development. But are we reading our infants the right books at the right time? Previous research suggests that 6- to 9-month-old infants exhibit increased attention and learning and show more specialized brain responses after parents read them books with individual names for characters (e.g., “Mr. Wigglesworth”). Books with characters who are named generically (e.g., “elephant”) or not named do not increase learning in infants under 9 months. Communicating this research-based message to caregivers not only encourages naming during reading, but fosters a culture of book reading in the home that can be incorporated into family routines and builds quality parent-infant relationships, later language development, and emergent literacy.

Communicating Science though Entertainment: We created a public service announcement or PSA that communicates the research showing that reading the right books at the right time – in this case, books with named characters — is critical to early development. Our goal was to design a message and create characters that appealed to a diverse range of everyday families. We focused on a humorous multiracial family – starring two grandpas who co-babysit their granddaughter. The grandfathers engage in a baby book battle to win the affection of their granddaughter. One grandpa believes it is important to dynamically and loudly entertain babies while the other believes you have to stir their mind and emotions by reading them excerpts from novels. The unexpected return of the baby’s parents allows them to intervene in the battle, and correct the grandpas: For babies under 9 months, it is important to read storybooks and name characters. Our long-term goal is to widely disseminate the science of early child development and transform “2 Grandpas, 1 Baby” into a series of PSAs and a sitcom focused on delivering one scientific message per episode about early child development.

Communicating Science through Journalism: At heart, science journalists must communicate complex issues as clearly and directly as possible. Yet the power of narrative or stories to hook our readers squares with communications research showing that fiction, humor and other less direct communications tools can be as, if not more, effective at delivering scientific messages to lay audiences. Hence, we developed a PSA.

Promoting Policies that Support Families and Children: Creating social policies that affect much of the population requires a foundation of public will that can be fostered – as through PSAs. Our PSA helps caregivers learn more about books that increase learning in infants under a year of age as well as implicitly showing that reading to children is important. And beneath that is the importance of engaging children in meaningful ways during their first months and years of life. These underlying messages generate an awareness of how critical the first years of life are and begin to build the public will for policies that support families and children’s development. From a public policy standpoint, we work to develop policies that support caregivers in providing the care, education, and environment children need to thrive.

LSX is an interdisciplinary two-year fellowship focused on child development (ages 0-5) designed to break through traditional silos that separate learning scientists from those in journalism, education policy, and entertainment. Over two years, fellows will collaborate on projects that elevate the insights of the learning sciences for new audiences. The intent is to learn how to communicate with the public, write op-eds in teams, and advance a project related to early childhood development that would be strengthened with the infusion of ideas from talented people in other sectors. The fellowship is administered by New America, the International Congress of Infant Studies, and the Jacobs Foundation.

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In an agricultural settlement in south-east Ivory Coast, 112 km away from the town of Aboisso, a group of men and women have set up houses within farming fields where rice, cassava, and bananas are farmed for local consumption and cocoa, coffee, palm, and rubber are grown for export. Cocoa-producing families sell their goods, through their cooperative, to Nestlé.

Women solve issues together

Living and working in this camp entails many challenges, which is why the women of the community have come together and created an association called “Débaya dèmin – Assistance to children” to better face them. The women discuss and make plans together to solve issues regarding the work in the fields, the selling of goods, or other difficulties they come across at home. With the nearest school being some 10 km away, education and enrolment for their children is a major challenge for the community. The women have therefore decided to take matters into their own hands: they want to learn themselves so that they can teach their own children.

Through “Débaya dèmin”, these women requested the help of Nestlé to go back to school. Together with the Jacobs Foundation and ICI, a numeracy and literacy program was set up. Thirty women between the ages of 25 and 55 signed up for it and the entire community helped build a shed where lessons take place. A young tutor in his last year of high school was taken on board and trained by the implementing organization to teach lessons three times per week.

Independence to sell products at local markets

Of those who initially enrolled, 20 women can now comfortably read simple sentences and make basic calculations; this has granted some of them the independence and confidence to successfully sell their products at local markets. Many have managed to use mobile phones to make calls and send messages for the first time. Furthermore, the school program covered several themes of interest of the women, such as disease prevention and health practices.

TRECC’s initiatives on literacy training for adult women farmers can positively influence family well-being and the learning perspectives of their children. Through the Nestlé Cocoa Plan and partnership with TRECC, Nestlé aims to improve the literacy and numeracy levels of mothers and children and ultimately reduce child labor. This educational and women empowerment initiative, over a span of three years, aims to engage a total of 900 women across the country. Year one has recently been completed and the program is currently being implemented in 10 communities with 216 women.

Hope to improve the prospects for families

Towards these efforts, Nestlé’s partner ICI has, within the TRECC partnership, also set up informal bridging classes for out-of-school children ages 9-13 and provided additional support for children attending school but at risk of dropping out, targeting a total of 2700 children. In total, 753 children are currently engaged or have completed that program. Darrell High, Cocoa Manager for Nestlé, states: “Nestlé is proud to partner with ICI, as part of the Jacobs Foundation’s TRECC program, to deliver much needed literacy and numeracy training for children and mothers in cocoa communities. By improving educational support, we hope to improve the prospects for families and further reduce the likelihood of child labor taking place.”

The goal by the year 2020 is for at least 50 percent of the industry partners engaged under TRECC to enhance child, youth, and education policies and practices. By providing support for the government, our industrial partners, and local organizations, we also seek to ensure that rural communities have access to quality education beyond the involvement of the Jacobs Foundation.

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Under the roof of the Jacobs Foundation’s Transforming Education in Cocoa Communities (TRECC) program, Mondelēz International, Nestlé, Barry Callebaut, and Mars will reach out to at least 16’000 children and youth and 72’000 adults over the next three years to provide quality education, empower women and assure child labour remediation. In a newsletter series, we present first results of the different projects. In this newsletter issue we feature Mars and their Village Savings and Loans project, implemented by CARE International.

The Village Savings and Loans (VSLA) project aims to provide opportunities for women but also for men in cocoa farming households to have access to loans and learn how to save their money. It has been set-up in 14 villages, where 70 groups have been formed consisting of almost 2000 members of which three quarters are women. Over the period of one year, groups meet on a weekly basis to collect the savings of the group members and store them in a cash box. After a while, the funds in the cash box are sufficient to provide loans to the members.

100% interest rate made borrowing too expensive

After one year, the funds in the cash box (savings and interests) are shared amongst the members proportionally to their savings during a share-out meeting. 43-year-old Viviane, mother of six has taken three loans, one to cover health expenses for her daughter, one to pay for shoes to be sold on the market and one to invest in fish to be sold. She paid them all back and on top of that was able to save 211 USD. “I am very proud”, says Viviane and plans to invest her savings in the fish business, which in return will allow her to send her six children to school.
Loan institutions such as banks or microfinance institutes did not exist before and the only option to get a loan was to borrow money from someone in the community. However, the interest rate was often 100% which made borrowing extremely expensive. With the VSLA it is the group who defines the interest rate and usually sets it around 10%. Those interest rates also contribute to the “growth” of the savings, which increases the motivation for members to borrow.

Husbands appreciate wives’ contributions

The VSLA has strengthened women’s income generating activities, which often influences their position in the household in general. Husbands have become more appreciative of their wives’ contributions and include them in planning and decision-making processes. “Men and women are now working together and talking more, and there is less conflict in the households”, says 38-year-old Marie Paule. She has five children and says: “We had money before, but we were never able to keep it for more than two to three days”. Now she has learned how to save and how to spend wisely. For her it is important to send her children to school, because they are the future of the community and will care for her when she’s old.

One pillar of a comprehensive strategy

It’s the same dream that everyone pursues: Women (and men) will do anything they can to improve the livelihoods of their families and children. Côte d’Ivoire’s smallholder cocoa farmers often subsist on less than USD 0.5/day, which is considerably below the poverty line of USD 2/day. This high level of poverty is compounded by very low literacy and school attendance rates nationwide, gender inequality and child labour, particularly in rural areas.

The Jacobs Foundation has committed CHF 50 million to change this situation by implementing a comprehensive strategy to transform education, empower women, and ensure child protection in cocoa-growing communities in Ivory Coast. This initiative is called TRECC (Transforming education in cocoa communities). The collaboration with cocoa- and chocolate companies is one pillar of the overall TRECC strategy and has pioneering character for the entire industry and beyond.

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