Civil Societies’ Services and Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) in Ethiopia: Challenges, Opportunities and Lessons from Pilot Programs

Abstract

In their pursuit to contribute to ECCE issues of access, quality and equity, some civil societies have
embarked on community- based ECCE pilot programs in different regions of the country. Consequently, this
research attempted to examine their contributions in view of the mediated community values and practices,
the challenges, and opportunities in the process of implementing ECCE, by specifically focusing on the
activities of three rural pilot ECCE centres in Ethiopia that are supported and directed by two NGOs. Data
were collected through in-depth interviews with children, guardians, facilitators, and ECCE personnel.
Findings indicated that the ECCE centers were serving two major functions: Availing learning resources and
opportunities for children and serving as entry points to conducting community and parent education
programs. It was observed that such centers would make important impacts on and contributions for
communities, parents, and, of course, the children. However, some concerns were noted challenging the
communities’ values, practices and resources; tendency to devalue some useful community values and
practices, and, more fundamentally, scalability and sustainability concerns. The opportunities identified to
enable implementing such programs were existence of civil societies with long years of ECCE experience,
ECCE guiding frameworks (legal, administrative, and academic), ECCE administrative structure, and the
untapped social and cultural resources and partnerships in the communities. It was generally noted that the
way these pilot ECCEs were designed, established, and implemented seemed to suggest lesser possibilities of
scalability for low income and rural Ethiopia despite the civil societies’ reported efforts. The study charted
out a road map to clear out the way forward.