Little Ripples refugee-led early childhood education

What is the humanitarian need being addressed?

Fifty-one percent of the 65.6 million people displaced globally are children. The disruption of families and community structures as well as the acute shortage of resources deeply affect the physical and psychological well-being of all refugees, however young children ages three to five are especially affected. The future of these children will be shaped by their experiences in refugee camps or settlements, yet there are no sustained or prioritized innovative solutions for this vulnerable age group. Consequently, generations of children continue to be at risk of irreversible long-term damage as they fall behind in their educational development from the start.

What is the innovative solution?

Through a community-led approach and state-of-the-art curriculum, Little Ripples trains refugee women to provide quality early childhood education programming in their own communities. Unlike traditional education programs, Little Ripples is refugee-led, cost-effective, sustainable, and scalable:

• Capacity-building: Little Ripples trains and employs refugee women to co-create, implement, and manage early childhood education in their communities.
• Cost-effective: Little Ripples is uniquely hosted in the home spaces of refugees, eliminating costly and timely construction of schools and reducing distance of learning spaces from communities.
• State-of-the-art and flexible curriculum: The curriculum is pre-established by global experts in early childhood development and adapted to the beneficiaries’ culture and context by the refugees themselves. It is designed to improve the social-emotional, cognitive and physical development of refugee children.

What were the expected outcomes?

The expected outcomes of implementing Little Ripples Ponds in refugee camps Kounoungou and Mile, eastern Chad, included:

• Improve the social-emotional and physical development of refugee children.
• Train, build the capacity, and employ refugee women, with the potential to scale-up.
• Change the humanitarian refugee response from a top-down, one-size-fits-all model to customized, refugee-led programming focused on quality over quantity.
• Influence Education Ministries and humanitarian agencies, such as UNICEF, to adopt or integrate components of Little Ripples curriculum.
• Influence UNHCR policy, mandated programming, and budget to include early childhood education.