Bridging Theory and Practice: How Notre Dame Students Designed a Two-Part Holistic Intervention for Haitian Children

Early Childhood Development and Poverty Alleviation

At the intersection of academic study and global fieldwork, the Early Childhood Development and Poverty Alleviation: A Global Perspective course challenges Notre Dame students to move beyond theory and translate the science of child development into real-world solutions. Led by Professor Neil Boothby, director of the Global Center for the Development of the Whole Child (GC-DWC), the course equips future leaders, policymakers, and practitioners with a deep understanding of how investing in a child's earliest years is one of the most effective ways to break the cycle of poverty.

During the Fall 2025 semester, the 27 enrolled students applied this knowledge to hands-on, community-based projects in South Bend, Haiti, and India, designing tangible, culturally-relevant tools and interventions that activate the home, school, and community to foster the holistic well-being (physical, emotional, social, and cognitive) of vulnerable children.

Student Project Highlight: Nutrition Security and Parent Empowerment in Haiti

Project Focus: Translating early childhood development (ECD) science into practical tools for parents in Haiti, focusing on both foundational caregiving skills and critical nutrition.

The GC-DWC has long been committed to the well-being of the whole child in Haiti, working alongside local partners to create "circles of care" that support children from birth through primary school. By integrating the GC-DWC’s L3 approach (activating the Lakay/Home, Lekòl/School, and Legliz/Church), the project empowers parents to be the primary architects of their children’s futures.

The Challenge: Nurturing the Whole Child in Haiti

The mission of the GC-DWC is to provide pathways out of poverty for the world’s most vulnerable children by strengthening the systems that enable children to thrive. In Haiti, this means addressing the critical needs of young children at home, at school, and in the Church community, with a special focus on the "first 1,000 days" of a child’s life, when the majority of brain structure and capacity is formed.

Students in the course tackled this challenge by developing a two-part holistic intervention, creating both a comprehensive parent education curriculum and a practical complementary nutrition program.

Part I: Parent Empowerment Program

A student team updated the existing GC-DWC Haiti Parent Empowerment Program with a focus on maximizing the unique ability of parents and caregivers to stimulate neurons and promote intellectual and social-emotional awareness. While the students led the project’s direction and design, they consulted throughout the semester with GC-DWC team members Tamara Doucet-Larozar (associate director of language and literacy) and Makenzy Voltaire (project coordinator) to ensure their materials met the specific linguistic and cultural needs of Haitian families.

The students focused on making the curriculum as accessible and engaging as possible, creating updated session slides and activities for seven core sessions:

• Foundational Parenting Skills: Establishing responsive caregiving and secure attachment.

• Cognitive and Language Development: Implementing simple, low-cost games to build pre-literacy and pre-numeracy skills (e.g., using songs to teach emotional vocabulary).

• Social and Emotional Learning (SEL): Activities designed to help children understand, recognize, and respond to their own emotional cues and those of others.

• Health and Well-being

• Culture and Values

• Parent Empowerment and Community Engagement

These updates ensure that the curriculum remains relevant, culturally sensitive, and aligned with the latest science on early child development.

“The students were true leaders in the design process of this project and really listened to our needs on the ground,” said Doucet-Larozar. “Their updates ensure that the curriculum remains relevant, culturally sensitive, and aligned with the latest science on early childhood development, providing our facilitators with fresh tools that make complex science accessible to every Haitian parent.”

Part II: The Innovative Nutrition Intervention

A second student team led the development of a strategy to address malnutrition and stunting by maximizing local resources. The students consulted with Jessica Rigutto-Farebrother, a human nutrition expert and visiting scientist at the GC-DWC, to ground their “no-waste” nutrition strategy.

The students' approach was to look beyond external aid and maximize the use of local resources, specifically goats, which are common and vital components of the Haitian household economy. The goal was to provide parents with practical, low-cost, and low-waste strategies for complementary feeding. Recognizing that nutrition is the fuel for brain development, the team developed a curriculum focused on local food systems to combat stunting and anemia:

• Goat-Based Interventions: Innovative guides for home-based goat milk pasteurization, the creation of shelf-stable goat jerky, and goat bone broth. This technique turns discarded bones into a vital source of protein, calcium, and collagen.

• Resourceful Recipes: Step-by-step guides for “no-waste” vegetable broth using produce scraps (yam peels, orange zest, mango skins) and fruit jams to preserve seasonal harvests.

• Strategic Food Pairings: The team created visual guides for pairing local foods to maximize nutrient absorption, such as adding Citrus (Vitamin C) to moringa or beans to increase iron uptake.

“It was inspiring to see the students take such a rigorous, research-based approach to a very practical problem,” said Rigutto-Farebrother. “By focusing on local food systems and ‘no-waste’ techniques, they’ve created a nutrition model that is both scientifically sound and incredibly resilient for the families we serve in Haiti.”

Makenzy Voltaire echoed the importance of this student-led approach: “In rural communities, we have the resources, like goats, but we don't always have the specialized knowledge to maximize their value. These 'no-waste' strategies are game-changers because they respect our local traditions while improving health. This project strengthens the autonomy of livestock farmers by offering sustainable solutions that are tailored to the local context and easily replicable.”

 

Real-World Application

These deliverables are not just academic exercises; they are being integrated into the GC-DWC’s Innovation Communities and Parent Empowerment Programs across Haiti. By rooting the curriculum in local resources, the students have ensured that these life-saving interventions are sustainable, accessible, and respectful of the Haitian context.

For student Harrison Clinton, a senior Psychology major, the project’s local focus was key: 

“I first chose to take this class not only due to high recommendations from Notre Dame faculty about Professor Boothby, but the topic of poverty alleviation and child development has been an interest of mine within the realm of psychology,” Clinton shared. “I chose the Haitian Nutrition Project because it focused around livestock and how you can serve others in rural communities. Part of my life, I grew up in the Caribbean and also a large portion of my family are livestock rearers, so I was able to take my experience and apply it to this project.”

By creating these accessible, local, and research-backed tools, the Notre Dame students have produced a model that reinforces the GC-DWC’s belief that educating and empowering parents is the most effective way to foster the well-being of the whole child in communities around the globe.

About the Global Center for the Development of the Whole Child (GC-DWC)

The Global Center for the Development of the Whole Child (GC-DWC) at the Institute for Educational Initiatives at the University of Notre Dame collaborates with researchers and practitioners to ensure the well-being—physical, emotional, social, and cognitive—of children and adolescents in low-resource and conflict-affected settings. Established to serve as a coherent platform for the Institute for Educational Initiative’s growing portfolio of global child development and learning programs, the GC-DWC creates environments that foster resilience and encourage children and adolescents to thrive. Using an innovative Whole Child Development (WCD) approach tailored to context-specific needs, the GC-DWC translates research into timely and thoughtful action, adapts research tools to improve the development of learning programs and policies, and activates systems (families, schools, communities) to lift children and adolescents out of adversity.

Learn more about the GC-DWC’s work to transform child development globally: iei.nd.edu/gc-dwc

About the Institute for Educational Initiatives (IEI)

Founded in 1996, the Institute for Educational Initiatives consists of more than two dozen initiatives that strive to improve education for all youth, particularly the disadvantaged, paying special, though not exclusive, attention to Catholic schools. Through research, the formation of teachers and leaders, and direct service to educational systems, the IEI’s scholars and practitioners pursue interdisciplinary collaborations to better understand and improve PK-12 education in the United States and around the world.

For more information about the IEI and its initiatives, visit iei.nd.edu.