OneSky for all children

The funding will be used to expand access to quality early childhood care and education (ECCE) for hundreds of thousands of children living in adversity in Vietnam’s industrial zones through the OneSky Caregiver Training program.

The program provides women operating home-based daycares for the children of low wage migrant factory workers with the  training in globally accepted practices in ECCE.

We are now at a transition-to-scale stage of the program with the potential to train caregivers in industrial zones across the country, ultimately benefitting over 400,000 children of factory workers and engaging government stakeholders to influence a systems change in the way these children are cared for.

Funds will be used to operationalize the program in new provinces, improve measurement and evaluation systems, and increase advocacy activities including launching a working group with key stakeholders from academic institutions, Vietnam National Institute of Educational Sciences, and Ministry of Education and Training, to conduct additional research and government advocacy. A recent evaluation of our program by Harvard’s School of Public Health indicated sustained improvement in quality in participating daycares as well as a positive impact on child development outcomes and we will use these results to support our activities to influence policy.

Our vision is that all vulnerable children living in industrialized zones in Vietnam receive quality early childhood care and education (ECCE) that enables healthy development in their formative early years, giving them a lifelong foundation to thrive. We envision that the women who care for these young children are skilled, respected and empowered in their roles as frontline home-based childcare (HBC) providers.

Our goal for the future is to catalyze a systems change that will lead to lasting and sustainable improvements in the quality of home-based childcare across the industrial zones of Vietnam and to eventually bring this intervention to other countries with similar challenges.

Our purpose is to improve the day-to-day practice of early childhood care and education in home-based childcare nationally, transform the professional supports and community that underlie the way the HBC workforce engages children and families, and build government capacity and the enabling environment to support good practices and positive outcomes in home-based childcare. Altogether these lead to our ultimate goal of improved early learning and developmental outcomes of vulnerable children at scale.

In the last decade millions of Vietnamese have migrated to find employment in Vietnam’s 325 industrial zones. Some 6,000 apparel and footwear factories in these zones employ an estimated 3.5 million workers. Approximately 80% of them are women, many with young children. Few can rely on the social network of support they once had in their home villages and even fewer have access to quality, affordable child care services.  

A home-based childcare industry has emerged as a response. The owners are predominantly local women entrepreneurs with limited education and support. As a result, the daycares are of variable quality. UNICEF estimated that over 52% of children in the poorest quintile in Vietnam, including many children in industrial zones, are not receiving the early education they need to thrive. Lack of quality early care endangers the futures of an entire generation, perpetuating the cycle of poverty and setting back progress for sustainable development.

 OneSky works in partnership with Vietnam’s government to educate women entrepreneurs operating daycares in industrial zones in best practices of early childhood education. The program has been proven to improve quality in daycares and uniquely contributed to child development outcomes. 

The uniqueness of our approach lies in the blended learning methodology that consists of a combination of in-person class time, online curriculum and direct observations & supported practice on site at the daycare.  Throughout the training, trainees are taught to utilize our purpose built online platform (1BigFamily) which feature valuable educational content including instructional videos, play activities, photos, research articles and toy-making guides using found objects.

The 1Big Family platform also offers trainees an opportunity to remain engaged with OneSky and their community of fellow caregivers post graduation.  Trainees can continue learning and integrating information in their daily work with children, then share their successes and challenges online with their trainers and peers. This process enables our small training team to promote quality skills development at scale across the country.

Research has proven that nurturing care during the first 1000 days of a child's life is crucial for healthy brain development. Yet, each year, over 250 million children are deprived of loving care and fail to reach their full potential cognitively, emotionally, and socially.

OneSky impacts humanity by expanding access to quality early care for marginalized children by training caregivers to provide them with the best start in life. This approach has been proven effective in improving multigenerational outcomes in health, employment, and economic productivity.

The OneSky curriculum has been tested over our 20 years of work in Asia and culturally adapted to each country where we work. And in every context in which we work, in-country teams are established to build local capacity and ensure cultural relevancy.

Government partners are involved from the early stages of all programs as we have learned that a large-scale change is possible only with having government support.

Training is supplemented by our 1BigFamily online learning community that offers continuous touch-points after the training is complete, thus keeping trainees engaged and fortifying their fidelity to OneSky methodology.

Lastly, we closely monitor the fidelity of program implementation to ensure intended impact.