Asante Africa Foundation

In the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic and looking at the learning challenges post pandemic, Asante Africa initiated and has advanced the child-led and community-driven community learning group models to foster learning continuity for children while out of school and also improve literacy and numeracy skills/competencies. The programs target children aged 8-24 years old in primary and secondary school levels, taught in different clusters as adolescents (8-14 years old) and youths (15-24 years old). For this project the focus will be on the 8-12 years old adolescent who go through the academic improvement program, Life skills curriculum - Wezesha Vijana training and Digital learning.

Based on lessons learnt from the COVID-19 pandemic which showed that the sole reliance on the physical school as the only source of learning can bring a very heavy disruption to continuous learning when schools are closed.  The community learning groups provide a sustainable solution for reimagining learning beyond the classroom. Within them, children go through self learning and peer-to-peer learning, learn through play, practice, dedicated teacher support in small groups and self assessments. The learning model adopts the competency based learning model where children acquire the intended competencies for academic performance, age appropriate life skills and is delivered in a digital device to foster digital learning. The assessments administered using the EGMA and EGRA tools enable right level learning and are easily adopted to be administered by self or community level (parents or teachers) to determine a learner's progress.  Research around East African countries has shown that most children go to school but do not learn adequately, and additionally children do not gain the acquired competencies expected of their age and the grades they are in; for instance only 3 in 10 current class level learners can do previous class level work. 

Historically, such a global prolonged school closure would have not been envisioned, but with the pandemic came new lessons that have triggered the reimagining and reinvention of the learning wheel. Through the pandemic, it has also been learned evidently that learning gaps do not only affect children who are out of school but even the children in school showcase an array of learning gaps which were further exacerbated by the long disruption of learning following the pandemic. This evidence based approach has proven its effectiveness in promoting learning at the community level by leveraging teacher volunteers, digital devices and community spaces to support academic learning, life skills and livelihood skill development. It further reduces the burden of missing out on supported learning in the classroom due to the low teacher to pupil ratio and enables focused attention to the child by the teacher at the community level.The Asante Africa model of teaching and learning equally enables the bridging of the learning gaps using the "Learn-Do-Teach" approach where one child who goes through the program creates a self-managed study group for another 5 children not reached in the program as a way of paying forward what the have learnt. This has enabled the organization to reduce an overflow of the community learning group enrollment limit for quality learning. 

With nearly 2000 learners’ reached between 2020 and 2021, the community learning groups have effectively been scaled up to provide continuous learning for out of school children and continued after school learning. Asante Africa works in East African countries within the last mile rural communities of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. These are very deep rural communities that are still very underserved in terms of quality learning, low exposure to digital learning opportunities and very constrained teacher support due to low teacher to pupil ratio. 

To ensure the effectiveness and sustainability of the Community Learning Groups for short term and longer term impact, the community and local stakeholder participation in the design and execution was critical. The focus on promoting academic learning, digital learning and life skills development at the community level have continuously leveraged the use of community resources.

There are a series of meetings with parents held in every implementation phase to sensitize them to the need to allow children to attend the community learning groups; as well as assuring and sensitizing them to the safety and security measures taken to safeguard the well-being of the children while learning at the community groups. A second level of parental engagement meetings was aimed at sensitizing the parents to ways to support their children"s learning during the COVID-19 school closure and how they were required to provide support to them while attending the community learning groups. Additionally, parents were also required to be the custodian of some of the digital devices (tablets) that were issued to the children while also ensuring there is controlled use and protection for children while using the devices at home. Parents were further sensitized to simple home assessment techniques they could use to see the progress their children were making during learning. In addition to the academic learning they were also sensitized to the life skills education that their children acquire in the community levels and some of the tangible program outputs.

During a community consultative forum, other than the challenge of lacking access to learning in school, the parents also mentioned the livelihood challenges that children faced, and based on the risk assessment and mitigation strategy analysis by Asante Africa, a household intervention was initiated to reduce vulnerability of the children, especially girls. The parents have also been critical in supporting the children's business idea as a way of practicing the learned budgeting and savings skills.

The teaching design and delivery involved working with teachers living within the communities. The initial planning stages involved a series of planning sessions with the volunteer government teachers as well other trained, but unemployed, teachers to develop the learning materials, lesson plans and the learning design. An inception training was conducted to enable learning and safety COVID measures. Nearly 48 volunteer teachers were engaged at the community level. 

Working with community level stakeholders has been an ongoing activity within the community learning groups to ensure program alignment with the school's national education curriculum and appropriate digital content for teaching the life skills- this has been done through a joint review of the work plan and curriculum materials with the stakeholders. The community level stakeholders are also continuously involved in the program review and evaluations. 

Working with the community stakeholders has also been helpful in providing learning spaces. Given that learning is focused on community resources, through lobbying and involvement of community stakeholders, there have been space donations to accommodate the learning in well controlled spaces that are also secure for the learners. 

In summary the community learning project has been successful and sustained due to the partnership and collaboration with the targeted communities. 

Asante Africa Foundation believes that when the youths and adolescents of East Africa are empowered, they will confidently address their life challenges, thrive in the global economy and catalyze positive change. These challenges can be mitigated by equipping them with quality education and the right skills (skills for livelihood and general life skills). Through our Learn-Do-Teach implementation model, we continuously educate and empower the adolescents and the youths so that they can use their actions to accelerate change as the change agents. The pay-it-forward approach of "teach one to teach five" enables the continuity of knowledge transfer and empowerment to more youths and adolescents. 

The overarching goal for the change is that youths and adolescents achieve greater academic success, build critical health and life skills and have quality of life and livelihoods. In the medium term, it will be observed that the youths and adolescents will have improved transitioning rates with quality performance in school, showcase active behavior change, demonstrate good health, economic and social practices and use the knowledge to advocate and empowerment more youths and adolescents.

The change will be realized by delivering to the adolescents and youths these interventions of accelerated learning in the classroom and scholarship support program: 

• Youth Livelihoods Programs (Leadership Entrepreneurship Incubator curriculum), 
• the adolescent and Youth Life Skill program (Wezesha Vijana) and 
• digital empowerment. 

In the short term, these will enable access to quality education and digital training for the vulnerable rural youths. Youths will demonstrate skill acquisition in the areas of leadership, entrepreneurship, job readiness and personal development, Adolescents will acquire and demonstrate knowledge and skills in health, hygiene, economics, social and personal development skills and youths will engage/network with key industry players to open opportunities for desired jobs/internships, business growth and advanced scholarship opportunities. 

The community learning groups and school based clubs are the key strategies for delivering the training to youths and adolescents.

Intertwined with the overall Theory of Change, the community learning groups are envisioned as an adept strategy for eliminating learning barriers among children by enabling self-guided, closely supervised and community driven learning opportunities for children at the community level by addressing the specific learning challenge that the children exhibit. Critical change that is envisioned will enable the achievement of:

• Output 1: Establish community learning groups (after school community clubs) to foster learning continuation beyond the classroom

  • Outcomes: 

  • School going children and out of school children attend and learn at the community learning groups

  • Enhanced peer to peer learning and support 

• Output 2: Train community volunteer teachers on the teaching and learning pedagogies for the community learning model 

• Outcomes: 

• Enhanced right level teaching and learning for the children with an increased number of children gaining literacy competencies 

• Built competency of community level teachers on the pedagogical skills for Teaching/Learning at the Right Level 

• Children acquire digital literacy skills and continuously leverage them for learning 

• Improved learning outcomes with students attaining competencies in literacy and numeracy 

• Output 3: Parental, community and stakeholder engagement

  • Increased sensitization of parents to their responsibilities and levels of engagement in the learning of their children

  • Increased enrollment of children into learning opportunities with an increase in the number of children enrolled in school 

  • Reduced cultural barriers to child education and quality learning 

  • Enhanced sustainability of the community learning groups with an increased support from the parents and the community

  • Replication of the digital learning empowerment to schools by leveraging on the government’s educational technology devices in schools

Asante Africa is at level 4 of evidence integration within the Nesta's Standards of Evidence. In 2021, Asante Africa conducted an independent evaluation of the community learning groups which followed the OECD criteria of evaluation of assessing the program's effectiveness, relevance, efficiency, coherence, sustainability and impact. The evaluation provided evidence as reported within the internal process evaluations that indeed the program was achieving the intended purpose of promoting learning continuity, enhanced the enrollment of students, especially girls, back to school post pandemic and enabled skill development for personal development and livelihood growth.

The evidence generated heavily influenced the organization's decision to strengthen the program design and strategy as a way of reimagining learning post pandemic. One of the critical aspects was bringing effectiveness to the community learning while also promoting school attendance--which influenced the scaling up of the digital empowerment program to communities and schools to bridge the learning gaps and enable students to gain learning lost, while also continuing to learn the curriculum. Consequently this also influenced the continuity of the community learning groups which serves the purpose of promoting after school learning for children going to school by enabling them to access learning materials which they lack at home or school. It also serves to enable learning for children who have not enrolled back to school post pandemic which is a result of teenage pregnancy, household poverty, child labour, child marriages or lost desire to continue with education. This aims to enhance the program theory of change of empowering the youths with quality education and skills - while also building life skills that promote personal values and awareness - to enable their return to school or acquire skills to foster livelihood growth. 

Additionally, the evidence generated from this intervention has been used to engage key stakeholders within the communities of implementation to demonstrate models that can promote learning recovery and continuity post pandemic. This has involved stakeholder dissemination and engagement forums with the county/district education officials, the evidence abstract was also presented globally at the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) 2022 under the theme of "Illuminating the Power of IDEA/LISM."  One of the large scale strategic approaches that Asante Africa has deployed to enable learning is the teacher capacity development in the use of digital tools for teaching and learning with a focus on "kolibri" as a tool for learning, innovation, skilling and play. 

The evaluation also enabled the organization to enhance the collection and continuous updating of data that shows how in the longer term the intervention is still achieving its positive change.  

The monitoring of the community learning groups includes two tiers of assessments; the process monitoring to track outputs and activities and outcome monitoring to capture data that shows evidence of the impact. The output monitoring mainly uses tools to capture quantitative data, and the outcome monitoring deploys both the use of qualitative and quantitative measurement tools, further research/evaluation and in-depth analysis of secondary data/literature to strengthen the evidence. 

At the output level the key indicators include:

• Output 1: Establish community learning groups (after school community clubs) to foster learning continuation beyond the classroom

  • Indicators:
    • Number of community learning groups established (by regions)
    • Number of learners (8-12 years) attending the community learning groups (by gender, age and grade levels)
    • Number of digital devices distributed to the community learning groups
    • Number of adolescents trained as TOT facilitators 
    • Number of learning materials distributed (by type and subject)
    • Number of community learning group sessions held (count by weekly)

• Output 2: Train community volunteer teachers on the teaching and learning pedagogies for the community learning model 

  • Number of volunteer teachers trained and engaged to support the community learning groups (by gender and employment status)
  • Number of teachers using the digital lesson plan template in kolibri

• Output 3: Parental, community and stakeholder engagement
  • Number of parents sensitized and engaged on their children learning
  • Number of community stakeholder engagement forums held
  • Number of key stakeholders engaged in the project implementation cycles (by type)
  • Number of schools engaged and trained on the learning method as a strategy for improving school based clubs

At the outcome level the key indicators include:

• Proportion of children showing learning improvement in the areas of literacy and numeracy competency skills (English and Mathematics) 

• Proportion of teachers demonstrating the use of the pedagogical skills for Teaching/Learning at the Right Level 

• Proportion of children acquiring digital literacy skills and continuously leverage them for learning 

• Proportion of students who attain improved learning outcomes in their academics (exam records)

• Proportion of parents showing awareness on their responsibilities and supporting the learning of their children at home and school
• Number of schools leveraging on the use of the government devices distributed to schools to support digital learning access and teaching for children in school
• Proportion of students, parents and community stakeholders reporting a reduction in cultural barriers to child education and quality learning 

Key sources of evidence:

• Exam records
• Pupil assessments (EGMA and EGRA tests)
• Club attendance records
• School admission data
• Focus group discussions
• Key informant interviews
• Case studies/human interest stories

Reimagining education post pandemic by advancing learning beyond the classroom through a community focused technology driven learning approach. 

While Asante Africa continuously generates evidence that shows that the programs are effective, learning is still at the center stage of our implementation strategies to learn new innovating and design improvements in the implementation of the learning improvement programs in different contexts. The learning questions helps to enhance the implementation agenda and sets a framework with key research questions to investigate. 

The involvement of the LEAP Fellows will help to strengthen the evidence by interrogating these key research questions: which could be examined through randomized evaluations, action research and other research methods to demonstrate the effectiveness of the community learning group approaches and their implementation models.

• Which of the learning approaches used at the community learning groups  successfully address learning gaps among the children that if successfully scaled up would improve learning outcomes at scale. 
• Generate evidence to demonstrate whether the EGRA and EGMA tests administered to determine a child's learning level combined with tailored teaching at the child's level (teaching and learning at the right level) improves the learning outcomes and establish the level of such skill retention by the learner (does it completely solve the learning challenge?) 
• Which of the pedagogical skills used at the community learning groups could be effectively scaled up and  integrated into the actual classroom learning through teacher development programs?
• What systems would be set in place to promote continuous generation and strengthening of existing data evidence to test multiple community learning models like the teacher volunteer community learning led groups vs the formal classroom focused teacher development, how effectively is the digital integration promoting learning in school? 
• What are the longer term effectiveness of the 12-week holiday camp pre-form one program held in a school setup for Tanzania students planning to join form one to build their English literacy using the Content learning integrated language - CLIL model?

Key outputs for the LEAP researchers would include:

• Conduct a review and produce a synthesis of evidence generated through the past evaluations so as to generate follow-up studies to improve the evidence
• Conduct a process evaluation of the program implementation design and document reviews of the pedagogical approaches and recommendations on best practices 
• Conduct independent assessment with the students to establish learning developments
• Conduct a review of the learning materials and recommend areas of improvements
• Hold a dissemination session with key stakeholders and education partners and share any identified policy improvement areas

Successful outcome of the project will help Asante Africa to accelerate the outcomes outlined in the 2021-2025 strategic plan. One of the key outcomes is enabling the children to achieve greater academic success which will increase quality transitioning within grades and secondary school. The children will further build critical literacy, numeracy and digital skills that enhances their growth in learning abilities and development.

The project will further strengthen outcomes of building critical health and life skills among the children. The strong evidence will also support sustainability of the program and growth through expansion by scaling up the community learning groups to reach more children.

The scaling up focus will also be around developing teacher capacity development tools based on the best practices. These will be further developed and delivered in the digital learning platform kolibri.