The AfriChild Centre has embarked on the inception of a 3-year project that aims to develop capacity for child-focused research, evaluation, and advocacy for Early Childhood Development (ECD) in refugee settings. This will be done by contributing evidence for effective policies and programs both in Uganda and Ethiopia.

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Kulea Watoto is an initiative aimed at improving early childhood development and transforming the livelihoods of refugees and host communities in Uganda by providing nurturing care and early childhood learning opportunities and building their own skills to generate income for their families.

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The PPURE training program is one of the Centre’s flagship programs. PPURE was initiated in 2018 to train policymakers and practitioners in the use of research evidence with a focus on child sexual abuse and exploitation. 

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The AfriChild Speaker series is an initiative by AfriChild to strengthen child well-being by providing a platform for engagement between academia, policymakers, and practitioners. This platform involves disseminating research evidence and discussing interventions related to child wellbeing to contribute to the SDGs 2030 and Agenda 2063. With the aim of interesting graduate students in child-focused research, we started the AfriChild Speaker Series.

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AfriChild in partnership with the Care and Protection of Children (CPC) Learning Network are testing out a tool that aims at enhancing child participation in research and programming particularly in humanitarian settings, The tool was developed to respond to the emerging need to engage children as partners in Child Protection during Covid-19. AfriChild is piloting this tool with children in research in Uganda to generate more evidence on its efficacy in promoting meaningful child participation.

The AfriChild Centre is partnering with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine to explore how global narratives of child protection and perspectives of honour affect child wellbeing. This is part of a multi-country study taking place in Uganda, Sri Lanka, New Zealand and South Africa. AfriChild is leading the Uganda study. This study advances current scholarship on two topics related to honour: 1) honour as a factor in sustaining violence against children, and 2) honour as a factor contributing to child well-being through children’s social relationships (with family, peers, and community). This research agenda is informed by both a systematic scoping review of the literature on honour-related violence and children, and by a meeting held in Washington DC in November 2019. In this meeting a group of academics, researchers, funders and activists gathered to reflect on the links between honour and child protection, and how investigating these links can improve child protection programs and policies. In this study, AfriChild is using an innovative youth participatory approach to enhance children’s meaningful participation in research. The youth are actively involved as peer researchers and the Centre uses other participatory methods to enhance the research experience.

The AfriChild Centre received funding from Plan International-Uganda to conduct a baseline assessment for the Playful Futures project. Playful Futures (PF) aims to develop effective, scalable approaches for engaging educators and communities around Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) centres in support of Learning through Play (LtP). The baseline study was conducted in 80 Early Child Care and Education Centers in 6 districts of Alebtong, Lira, Kamuli, Buyende, Tororo and Nebbi. Study Objective The overall goal of the project is “Children improve literacy, and numeracy skills and develop socio-emotional skills through Learning through Play. Research QuestionTo what extent does the ECCE intervention improve quality and sustained learning through play and holistic development among children 3-6 years in centre-based learning environments?

 

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The Inter-University Programme aims at strengthening inter-university collaboration and training in child-focused research skills. Under this program, AfriChild takes on mid-level child-focused researchers from seven universities in Uganda and equips them with skills in child-focused research methods, grant acquisition, and publication. The seven Universities the Centre works with are Makerere University, Kyambogo University, Nsamizi Training Institute, Uganda Martyrs University, Uganda Christian University, Gulu University, and Muni University.