In 2024, Places to Grow launched the Joint Action Fund, a grant scheme that fosters innovation, learning, and cross-sectoral collaboration aiming for systemic change in the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia. This flagship initiative is designed to strengthen collaboration among Places to Grow partners and other relevant stakeholders, therefore contributing to the creation of a robust and evolving ECD ecosystem. It consists of financial and non-financial support, and also incorporates knowledge-sharing with the community of practice.
Converging with Places to Grow’s strategy, the Joint Action Fund is not only focused on the provision of consistently high-quality services to uplift all children and families, but is also committed to spearheading experiments that generate crucial insights. These insights will, in turn, inform the development of high-quality ECD services, facilitate more effective collaborations, and ultimately drive systemic change.
The first Joint Action Fund call focused on supporting experiments testing innovative solutions in ECD, and projects aligned with Places to Grow’s strategic themes.
The awarded projects will be carried out throughout 2024. Their outcomes will be presented at the Places to Grow Conference in Prague, Czech Republic on 14 November.
LOCAL INCUBATORS OF ECD
by the Czech ECD Platform
Emily Vargas-Baron, a researcher from Stanford, proved that the most efficient ECD programmes are always intersectoral: they also focus on parents and are coordinated with a vision. There are many ways to achieve this goal. In this project, we aim to explore which tool would be the most effective and wanted by local stakeholders in four chosen Czech municipalities.
The four direct goals of this Joint Action Fund project are the following: diverse stakeholder engagement as it is much harder to build cooperation without relation between individuals; gaining a deeper understanding of local needs to be able to support them adequately; exploring if the evidence-based Primokiz methodology, held by ISSA, sufficiently addresses local needs in the Czech context; and a preliminary research on which organisation in the Czech Republic can provide a Primokiz licence in the future.
COORDINATED SERVICES OF ECD IN A SELECTED LOCALITY IN THE BANSKÁ BYSTRICA REGION
by SOCIA
The project's goal is to pilot and verify a coordinated approach to providing early care support services selected segregated communities in the Banská Bystrica Region, Slovakia.
The coordinated ECD will implement the new procedures defined in "The Path of a Child with a Health or Social Disadvantage in the Early Childhood Support System" in practice. SOCIA participated in the creation of the mentioned material as part of the Permanent Interdepartmental Working Group on the Strategy and Action Plan of coordinated early intervention and early care services for 2022 - 2030 in Slovakia.
The three direct milestones of this Joint Action Fund project are the following: establishing cooperation with the chosen municipality - signing a cooperation agreement or memorandum; employing a local coordinator of ECD, and an agreement on the implementation of the child's journey through the early childhood support system across all areas (social, health, and education).
TOWARDS IMPROVED QUALITY OF OMAMA AND THE SUBSEQUENT ECD SOCIAL SERVICE
by Cesta von
Cesta von’s project aims to evaluate and make the best use of the Omama program's experiences in shaping a systemic approach to early childcare through advocacy. The project has two key goals.
The first one is research: Cesta von will conduct an in-depth program evaluation, assess existing data, and collect missing data to objectively identify the impact, benefits, and areas for improvement. The focus of the research will be on the impact of ECD, the impact on parental competencies, barriers in access and acceptability and the biggest contributors to impact. All relevant outcomes of the research and know-how will be shared with other ECD providers or the state.
The second key goal is advocacy: based on the results of the research, Cesta von will provide recommendations for the design of a state-supported early childcare social service. They will also share the knowledge acquired over the course of this grant, and actively advocate for the quality of planned systemic measures, creating recommendations for the quality framework of a newly established service.
ECD ECOSYSTEM MAPPING AND VISUALISATION PROJECT IN BANSKÁ BYSTRICA REGION
by Holis
Using a portfolio approach, the goal is to create a visual map of the current ECD ecosystem in the Banská Bystrica Region. Rather than focusing on isolated projects or sectoral challenges, the portfolio approach allows for a collection of initiatives to be viewed and managed collectively, ensuring synergies and unified goals.
At least two outcomes will be achieved:
The first outcome involves the Need Map creation that identifies areas with critical needs for ECD, which will be achieved through proxy data such as primary school performance or dropout rates.
The second outcome is the Mapping of ECD Services and Actors that will pinpoint all the existing ECD services, actors, and related institutions within the region. The need map will be overlaid to highlight areas with high needs but low access to ECD services.
The ecosystem map will be a particularly useful resource for the ECD coordinator role of the Banská Bystrica Region.
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PRESS INQUIRIES
Christina Ermilio
christina@weareholis.org