The Client: Save the Children Alliance - Kosovo
The Challenges:
Save the Children (SC) is committed to the protection of children and their right to an education. In Kosovo's post conflict period, on-going ethnic strife, weak governmental infrastructure and an historically segregated education system provided little opportunity for children, especially very young children, to be with children from the other ethnic groups in their communities. The Mozaic model for community reconciliation through multicultural, bilingual pre-school education (USAID) for Save the Children in Kosovo (SCiK), was an attempt to introduce pre-school education using a novel conflict resolution approach. The evaluation sought to assess children's developmental and educational milestones amid the complex culturally-embedded issues among Albanians, Serbians, Turks, and Bosniaks.
Our Approach:
After one year of implementation, a SC Global Impact Monitoring tool was applied to gauge the extent to which the Mozaic program had made an impact along five dimensions of change:
- Changes in the live of young children,
- Changes in policies and practices affecting children's rights,
- Changes in equity and non-discrimination for children,
- Changes in civil society's and communities' capacity to support children's rights.
Our Method:
- Institute a practical monitoring system.
- Train SCiK staff to monitor the program, verify findings, interpret data and learn what works.
- Key informant interviews with governmental representatives, NGO stakeholders, and school principals.
- Focus groups with teachers and parents.
- Participant observation with pre-school children in classrooms. Listen to children's play and verbal communication with each other. Watch them practice reconciliation techniques in plan and learning activities.
- Write a Global Monitoring Impact Report with SCiK staff.
This was the third opportunity for an evaluation consultant to work with SCiK staff on pre/primary education program monitoring and evaluations.
If you would like to learn more about these particular results and how to apply this type of evaluation to your programs, please look at our available reports.