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Activating the Home

lakay

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L3 Systems Activation:
The Home, School and Church

By activating the Haitian child’s most central networks, engaging key stakeholders, and leveraging culturally-relevant and engaging programming, the GC-DWC promotes a whole child approach to development that values the cultural richness of Haitian communities and will create a ripple effect throughout the country.

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Parent Empowerment Programs

Parents are a child’s first teachers. At the GC-DWC, we recognize the importance of the role that parents and caregivers play in their children’s overall development and well-being, and strive to empower parents with science-based innovations and practices to support their children’s growth inside and outside of the classroom. To activate the home (lakay), the GC-DWC has developed and implemented parent workshops and empowerment programs, where parents and caregivers learn about positive parenting, nutrition, and child development.

Our Haiti Parent and Caregiver workshops, hosted in collaboration with local parish communities, unpack the importance and science of positive parenting, social care, alternatives to harsh discipline, and school readiness through a seven to ten-week long course. Session themes include the importance of the parent-child relationship; consistent and responsive care; social emotional and cognitive development connection; self-regulation, discipline, and corporal punishment; wellbeing and self-care; and nutrition. The parents and caregivers leave these workshops with tips and tricks to effectively embed positive parenting into their daily routine. 

Parent Objectives

 

In 2024, we launched parent workshops specifically formatted for fathers and male caregivers, as well as workshops designed for young parents and young potential parents. This ensures that all workshop sessions contain appropriate objectives for all kinds of parents and caretakers, establishing the best possible outcomes for children and their respective households.

 

 

Parent Empowerment Programs and QuIP

Rapid Evaluation, Assessment, and Learning Methodology (REALM) supports the GC-DWC’s refinement and iteration of programming in the home, school, and church, but was not designed to measure whether the L3 ecosystem of the home, school, and church was being activated to support Whole Child Development (WCD) for young children. To measure whether the L3 system was being activated, in 2022 the GC-DWC undertook a holistic, system-wide evaluation (Qualitative Impact Protocol).

The Qualitative Impact Protocol (QuIP) assesses the impact of interventions by collecting narrative statements from program participants. Through the use of open-ended and exploratory questions about changes in expected program outcomes, the QuIP aims to disentangle possible sources of influence by avoiding questions that are specific to the programs being evaluated. According to the QuIP assessments, parent empowerment programs seem to be producing the most effective results.

A majority of parents and teachers identified L3 workshops and support as changing their behaviors to be more supportive of WCD for young children. Many parents reported that they stopped beating their child after the parent empowerment program, and attributed improved overall family well-being to the workshops. Others indicated that they began feeding their children more nutritious food at home.

 

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