As part of the Play to Learn initiative, with funding from the LEGO foundation, BRAC and Sesame Workshop designed a 6-month fathers’ engagement component to be added to an existing parenting intervention for mothers. The program was developed for fathers of children aged 0-3 in the Rohingya camps and surrounding host communities in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, and focuses on mental health, responsive caregiving, and engagement with family. As part of an impact evaluation of the intervention1, we at Global TIES, New York University, developed an instrument to measure the quality of the intervention delivery.

This brief discusses the importance of measuring quality, the process of developing and implementing this quality instrument, and the preliminary analysis of data collected using it. In addition to informing the impact evaluation, a broader goal of this work is to contribute to the emerging knowledge on measuring program quality and fidelity, particularly in low and middle income countries (LMIC) and emergency contexts, and better understand “how” and “why” parenting programs in these contexts do or do not work.

Since its inception, partners of the LEGO Foundation-funded Play to Learn project have prioritized co-construction and community engagement1, 2 in designing and running programs that target children and caregivers in Bangladesh affected by the Rohingya displacement crisis. This includes the Humanitarian Play Labs (HPLs), a flagship program of BRAC, one of the main humanitarian partners implementing early childhood development (ECD) activities under Play to Learn. Given the emphasis and importance placed on community engagement in the HPL set-up and operations, Global TIES for Children at NYU, as the main research partner of the project, conducted a specific study to better understand the myriad ways in which community engagement happened around the HPLs and was perceived by the community. The study team, which included project partners and our data collection partner, Arced Foundation, was particularly interested in how participating community members experienced and understood these programs and how they would like to be engaged to sustain them beyond the lifetime of the six-year Play to Learn project.

In conducting this research, the study team deliberately employed participatory research approaches that themselves relied on community engagement as a key strategy for generating specific research questions (related to the study’s focus areas), collecting data, and interpreting community input. This brief discusses the importance of participatory research, the process of running a participatory workshop, and reflections on how the data generated is of particular value to humanitarian implementers. In addition to informing program delivery, a broader goal of this work is to contribute to understanding both the “how” of participatory research methods (what goes into them, how they can be organized) and the “why” behind them (the benefits of multi-method approaches and community engagement as key research strategies).

This article is among the first to quantify the actual impact of pandemic-related closures on early child development, in this case, for a sample of young children in Chile, where school and childcare closures lasted for about a year. We use a unique data set collected face-to-face in December 2020, which includes child development indicators for general development, language development, socioemotional development, and executive function. We find adverse impacts on children in 2020 compared to children interviewed in 2017 in most development areas. In particular, 9 months after the start of the pandemic, we found a loss in language development of 0.25 SD.

🔗 Read more here: https://doi.org/10.1086/731588

This study assessed a 6-month phone-based early childhood development (ECD) intervention for Syrian and Jordanian caregivers in Jordan

Excerpt: Rohingya refugees residing in Bangladesh have been exposed to profound trauma in addition to ongoing daily stressors of living in the refugee camps. Accurate assessments of mental health burden and their impact among this population require culturally sensitive tools that remain lacking in this context. The purpose of this study was to characterize salient cultural concepts of distress (CCDs), their causes, consequences, and approaches to treatment, among Rohingya refugees living in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, to help inform future measurement and intervention design.

Authors:Kathy Trang, Caroline Hiott, AK Rahim, Shafiqur Rahman, Alice J Wuermli

KEYWORDS: Mental Health, Rohingya

In reflecting upon a decade of research at NYU Global TIES aimed at supporting children's holistic development within contexts of conflict and crisis, this white paper encapsulates our collective learnings from working with a network of actors in low- and middle-income and conflict affected contexts who aim to understand what works, how, and for whom. The goal of this paper is to distill insights from the diverse perspectives and experiences of dedicated researchers, inspire action, and provide recommendations for a future distinguished by inclusive and impactful outcomes.

Global TIES for Children has announced the appointment of Florencia Lopez Boo as the center’s new Director, effective this Fall 2024. Lopez Boo will also be a professor of economics and applied psychology in the Department of Applied Psychology at NYU Steinhardt.

This study is a causal impact evaluation of Watch, Play, Learn (WPL), a program by Sesame Workshop that consists of videos that aim to bring playful early learning opportunities to children, especially those affected by conflict and crisis, via mobile phones. This study focused on the effects of WPL math and social-emotional skills content delivered to Venezuelan migrants and Colombian children living in communities in Colombia where families and children face challenges in accessing essential services, including early education. Implementation was led by the Colombia office of Innovations for Poverty Action.

This study is a causal impact evaluation of Watch, Play, Learn (WPL), a program by Sesame Workshop that consists of videos that aim to bring playful early learning opportunities to children, especially those affected by conflict and crisis, via mobile phones. This study focused on the effects of WPL math and social-emotional skills content delivered to Venezuelan migrants and Colombian children living in communities in Colombia where families and children face challenges in accessing essential services, including early education. Implementation was led by the Colombia office of Innovations for Poverty Action.

The Holistic Learning Assessment System (HOLAS) Bank is a curated inventory of educational tools/assessments and relevant monitoring and evaluation (M&E) resources designed for use and/or implemented in Colombia and Peru.