Watoto Wasome

Vision

To empower children in underserved communities by implementing interventions that cultivate an understanding and love for literacy.

Mission

Improving literacy of underserved children aged 3-10 years through child-centered learning

Core Values

1. Child-Centered Learning - We believe that every child has the potential to learn and grow, and we use a hands-on approach to engage them in the learning process. By using affordable materials that can easily be implemented and adapted to different environments, we create a fun and interactive learning experience that leads to better outcomes.
2. Use of Physical Storybooks - While digital technology is exciting, we believe that nothing can replace the joy of turning the pages of a physical storybook and engaging with each tangible page and picture. Our focus on physical books allows us to create a unique experience that fosters a love of reading and learning. 
3. Continuous learning - We are committed to measuring the impact of our programs to ensure they are effective in improving children's literacy. We start with an initial assessment to gauge the child's literacy level and design activities to suit their growth, conduct continuous assessments throughout the year, and do a final assessment at the end of the year to measure their growth. This helps us measure the effectiveness of our programs and informs our future work.
4. A foundation of love. Our work is grounded in love, as we believe that every child deserves to feel cared for and supported. We prioritize forming bonds with each child before teaching them because we know that this makes learning easier and more meaningful. By nurturing a sense of belonging, we create an environment where every child can thrive.

As the founder of Watoto Wasome and a trained and passionate early years specialist, Danielle carries Watoto Wasome's mission at heart and has a way of influencing those who join the team to carry it too and enjoy their time there.

Her roles include:

• Identifying and forming partnerships with leaders in different target communities and liaising with children's home/community school heads to partner and implement literacy improvement programs
• Seeking partnerships with the local government
• Leading in fundraising activities
• Leading in grant and proposal writing
• Budgeting for each year's activities
• Coordinating development of literacy assessments (baseline, continuous and end-line) and plans, implementation and success evaluation for targeted age group
• Implementing literacy interventions with children
• Conducting teacher trainings on cost-effective and child-centered literacy activities

As the founder and CEO of Watoto Wasome, Danielle has some background in different types of research and is fully aware of the level of commitment needed. Something she has committed to because of her passion, expertise and experience in the field of literacy education for children over 12 years.

As a non-profit organization that has fully focused on improving literacy levels among children aged 3-10 years for the last three years, the Watoto Wasome team has the necessary knowledge, skills, and experience to design, implement, and evaluate effective literacy programs when well guided.

Additionally, we are committed to seeing improved literacy outcomes among Kenya's least privileged children which is a key motivation to our team deciding to join this project. We are fully aware that the outcomes of the program will help strengthen the implementation and evidence of our solution which is key to expanding our reach and partnering with the Kenyan Ministry of Education in implementing a solution that has evidence of working because they are also seeking for solutions. The fact that we have a solution that we have seen work on a small-scale but cannot undeniably say that the children's improvement has solely been because of our intervention, all factors controlled, we would love the opportunity to conduct research that will cater to that and build our evidence. With that, we are more than ready to commit the hours, both to learning from the experts, and carrying it out on the ground.

Watoto Wasome's understanding of child-centered learning and our access to underserved children puts us in a strong position to develop evidence-backed solutions that meet the needs of the type of children that we serve. The expertise and guidance from the fellows and experts we will interact with during this project is going to be invaluable in building an approach that will demonstrate the effectiveness of our solution through its focus on strengthening the evidence base of learning solutions.

Moreover, we have a dedicated team that is willing to go to the ground and conduct research to establish the effectiveness of our interventions and even report back to the LEAP team. Our team's experience in working with children in this age range (2-12 years) and our understanding of the challenges faced by underserved children will enable us to design innovative solutions that embrace learning variability that can also be implemented by other organizations.

Finally, Danielle is well-equipped to balance the project's demands with other organizational priorities to ensure that it is a success and contributes to our overarching mission of improving literacy levels among children in under-served communities by closing the gap in the quality of literacy education.

Watoto Wasome leverages on the power of child-centered learning to improve literacy among underserved children in Kenya.

Watoto Wasome is an organization that seeks to address the problem of low literacy levels among under-served children aged 3-10 years in Kenya as this significantly inhibits their ability to succeed in life. A report by Uwezo Kenya (2016) found that nationally, only 3 out of 10 class 3 children can read a class 2 level story and 1 out of 6 children in the same class cannot read an English word. This indicates that children are not well prepared in key early literacy skills acquired at preschool levels and the reading skills acquired in the early grades one and two. This is what Watoto Wasome is striving to remedy through provision of quality early literacy education, especially among children from rescue centers, children's homes, low-resourced schools and those who reside in rural areas.

Low literacy levels means that children are growing up without basic reading and writing skills thus inhibiting their chances of succeeding in school and eventually resulting in limited employability hence continuing the cycle of poverty and inequality. In addition to this, inability to read or comprehend has also been seen to contribute to low self-esteem and belief in being able to achieve or become anything in life. These low literacy rates are compounded by the fact that majority of children do not have access to books or other learning resources or well-trained teachers that can help them develop their reading and writing skills. On top of this, the traditional rote method of approach to teaching reading and writing in many schools has continued to prove ineffective and unengaging for many children.

We believe that through our efforts, we can contribute to a more equitable and just society where all children have access to quality and engaging education and the opportunity to reach their full potential. All while enjoying the learning process.

Watoto Wasome's solution is to improve literacy levels among  Kenyan children who are significantly below their expected grade-level. We achieve this by using affordable, adaptable child-centered interventions that focus on creating engaging activities that promote reading and writing skills while focusing on the child's current level rather than their age or grade. Our program also involves training volunteers, teachers and caregivers on the what and how of our approaches and training them on how to create tools and resources to support children's literacy development using their available materials.

Our program is designed to be flexible and adaptable to the learning needs and level of each child. Apart from the fact that majority of the children we come across lag behind due to lack of quality learning programs, some of the children we work with are found to have dyslexia or ADHD which significantly slows their ability to grasp what is being taught. This led to us adapting our activities to this group of children. Whether it is giving a child with ADHD a crayon or pencil and paper to fidget with so they can stay engaged, or significantly slowly down the learning process for a child with dyslexia and ensuring a certain learning objective is repeated over several activity days but in different, yet engaging, ways so they grasp it better. We also strive to include a variety of learning styles into our interventions. This is done by including audio, visual and kinesthetic activities in our lesson plans to ensure each child is holistically involved, whether they are neurodivergent or neurtypical.

We use a variety of teaching methods, including games, songs, art, and lots of storytelling, to make learning fun and interactive. We also rely heavily on the use of physical storybooks which children love to engage with. Children are also encouraged to actively participate in their own learning experience and interact with peers in the process to build community and collaboration.

We are striving to create and encourage a culture of reading both for learning and leisure in the learning/classroom space by providing a variety of books and other reading materials. We encourage our staff to tell/read stories dramatically to the children and giving them opportunities to do the same even with just using the pictures as most cannot read at the beginning. This also helps develop their self-confidence.

Our solution works by addressing the root causes of low literacy levels in under-served communities which are poor quality of instruction, limited know-how of child-centered approaches and language of instruction (we use the language children are familiar with i.e. Kiswahili to introduce new English terms as exams are set in English). By providing these, we continue to  witness growth in literacy levels and classroom engagement and use of instruction that is tailored to children's needs and abilities.

Watoto Wasome has conducted a range of research studies to demonstrate the effectiveness of our solution in improving the literacy levels of under-served children in Kenya. Our research has included both foundational and formative studies that have helped to establish the evidence base for our program.

Our foundational research includes literature reviews from data collected from organizations such as Uwezo Kenya, Zizi Afrique Foundation and World Bank that have helped us identify how deep and far-stretched the illiteracy problem among Kenyan children is. This research was part of the foundation of how and why we started Watoto Wasome and developed a learner-centered approach to help mitigate the situation. This is why we focus on creating engaging activities that promote reading and writing skills and building a love for reading and writing among children.

Our formative research so far has included conducting initial and end-line assessments of each child's literacy levels to gauge original literacy level, progress and necessary interventions. We have also conducted end-year interviews with children to find out what they liked about our programs. These two studies have really helped us refine our program and ensure that it is effective in improving children's literacy levels and their engagement levels. 

For our teacher training we conduct feasibility interviews after to assess if they find it practical for their different schools and classes and what further support they would need. We have found that our program is well-received and most are eager to try it out but would love more training.

Our foundational research helped us identify the extent of the illiteracy problem among Kenyan children with the most recent desktop findings we came across in the Standard Newspaper presented by Zizi Afrique Foundation in 2023 showing that at least 60% of high school learners had difficulty in basic reading. With a government requirement of 100% transition rate to high school regardless of performance in primary, this percentage is alarming and a clear indication that the early years foundational stage is weak or non-existent. These findings further cement our mission and zeal to help children who need intervention in their early years.

Our foundational research so far has revealed the effectiveness of our learner-centered approach in improving the literacy levels of children in Kenya. For example, in 2022 we worked with 23 children at a Rescue Center in Nairobi and recorded an overall literacy improvement of the 3-10 year olds from 10.5% in February to 75% in November. 

Interviews with children at the end of our programs have helped us refine the program and ensure its effectiveness and give the team morale that children are actually enjoying and learning. 

Interviews with teachers post-training revealed that most teachers are willing to put in the extra work to create a learner-centered environment and materials to see improvement in their grades but a few hours of training once every year was not enough. So this is an area we would love to fully explore and implement alongside our team's direct interventions with children. We already worked with Turning Point Kenya and Elimu Fanaka on this and a new brewing partnership with Teach for Kenya which reached out to us on teacher training partnerships.

Our research is not as comprehensive as we would like it to be because of limited knowledge especially on establishing whether a child's literacy levels increased due to our interventions and/or teacher training or other factors and this is something we are eager to learn and improve on through the LEAP project.

While we have conducted some studies to establish the effectiveness of our literacy program, they are not as strong as we would like. We acknowledge the need to strengthen our evidence base to better understand the impact of our solution on improving the literacy levels of under-served children in Kenya. We are thinking about data and evidence that will appeal to both local and international audiences, probably through standardized yet widely accepted literacy measurement standards. The more robust our evidence base gets, the better we can inform decisions on our approach and demonstrate the value of our program to potential partners, donors, and other stakeholders.

We are particularly looking towards forming a strong partnership with Kenya's Ministry of Education, particularly the State Department for Early Learning and Basic Education. Not just as another organization in their system working on children's literacy, but as a voice of knowledge and evidence of interventions that they can use to improve children's learning across the whole country. This is because they have tried a variety of solutions and this year said they are willing to support initiatives aimed at improving learning in the early stages of learning in the Standard Newspaper after research showed that less than 40% of high-school learners passed basic reading tests.

One of the key areas we need to strengthen is our use of rigorous research methods that can help us establish cause-and-effect relationships between our approach and children's improved literacy outcomes. While our formative research has helped us to assess the effectiveness of our program at an organizational level, we cannot fully ascertain causality. For example, we would like to see if we can conduct randomized control trials that can help us to control for external factors that may be influencing literacy outcomes as we have seen a lot of studies that prove this as an effective causal study for a project like ours.

Additionally, we recognize the need to improve the quality of our data collection and analysis methods to ensure that our findings are more reliable and accurate. This includes investing in better data collection tools and platforms, as well as improving our training and capacity building efforts for our team who are in charge of collecting and analyzing data.

The use of technology and data analytics is another area our evidence base needing strengthening in order to better understand the impact of our approach. We recognize the effectiveness of using digital platforms to collect and analyze real-time data, which can help us to  identify areas where our approach is succeeding or needs improvement quicker. Additionally, we see how data analytics can help us to better tailor our program to the needs of individual learners through identification of trends and patterns.

Overall, strengthening our evidence base is a critical priority for Watoto Wasome and our reach, and we are committed to investing our passion, time and resources to achieve this goal.

1. What is the causal impact of Watoto Wasome's literacy interventions on children's reading and writing skills, as compared to children who did not receive the intervention?
2. How can Watoto Wasome optimize its program implementation and delivery to increase its impact on children's literacy outcomes while considering the limited resources available?
3. What are the most effective strategies for teacher training and support to improve literacy outcomes among children in under-resourced schools in Kenya?

From a formative research standing point, we are looking forward to gaining insights into the feasibility of our approach with different target populations, particularly 'resource-limited' ones as that is the case in most needy regions in Kenya. We also seek to understand how our program can be adapted to suit English language learning from a mother-tongue/Kiswahili start-off since that is children's primary language yet exams are set in English. Another output in line with the above is how can it work with different class sizes and limited teachers.

In order to achieve this, we would like the LEAP Project team to guide us on conducting feasibility studies and user interviews with teachers and children in different regions and languages. This will help us to understand the unique challenges that children and teachers in these regions face, and how we can adapt our program to meet their needs.

As a summative research project, we would like to learn how to plan and conduct randomized controlled trials to establish cause-and-effect relationship between our interventions and children's improved literacy outcomes. We would like to conduct a randomized control trial of our program in at least two different regions in Kenya to increase credibility of our results at a countrywide level. This will allow us to compare the literacy outcomes of children who have participated in our program with those who have not. We love to hear from the children about our interaction together so also interviews for the qualitative aspect of our program is important for us.

First priority is for our team's direct work with children and secondary, through teacher-training in schools to use our approach in their classrooms once we have evidence for our direct input. This will help us build evidence of the effectiveness of our programs in improving literacy rates among Kenyan children.

Watoto Wasome will use the outputs of the LEAP Project to strengthen the evidence base of our solution and improve our program effectiveness. Specifically, we will take the following actions:

1. Use the results of the RCT study to provide evidence to our partners and supporters on the actual impact attributed to our intervention. Beyond the project sprint, the skills we will gain in the program will help us track the progress of individual children over a longer period of time so we can understand the extent to which our program is making a difference. 
2. Incorporate feedback and recommendations from the usability testing into our program design: The pilot study will help us evaluate the effectiveness of our program in improving children's literacy levels and engagement. We will use this information to refine our program and ensure that it is having a positive impact on the children we serve and children are actually enjoying the learning process. This will ensure continuous user-friendliness for implementers and engagement and literacy growth for children.
3. Use the results of the feasibility study to inform our teacher training approach: We will work on coming up with a standardized yet practical teacher-training manual and program that can be tailored to different environments and resources and provide additional support where necessary.
4. Pitch to join the Government literacy advisory board: after the program and with our thorough results we can confidently approach implementing partners to use our approach. We are particularly keen to partner with the Kenyan Ministry of Education as one of their sounding board on effective strategies. This is because they have been clear about the fact that they are still seeking working solutions to improve children's literacy levels as their commendable efforts to try and put most children in school has worked but they are not seeing results. Having such strong evidence to back us up will give us a seat at the table and help them actually implement a program that is working.
5. Share our growth and learnings as Watoto Wasome from the LEAP sprint with other local implementing partners. This will help them in creating or adapting programs that have strong evidence on working and yielding results and how to effectively collect and analyze their own data. It will also serve as an encouragement for them to apply to the next LEAP cohort.
6. Use the results to seek for more funding to implement our approach in more areas in Kenya, particularly rural communities that are most impacted by low literacy levels. Our goal is to stretch our reach to the whole of Kenya, particularly children in rural Kenya so funding is key to realize this goal
7. Celebrate! After successfully participating in and concluding in the LEAP project, we will celebrate the results as a team to motivate and encourage us to keep going and keep using evidence.

As a growing organization that is eager to make a difference in a child’s future through literacy, the LEAP Project sprint will help us improve the effectiveness of our approach and strengthen the evidence-base for our solution. 

Short-term outcomes:

1. Increased understanding of the effectiveness of our literacy program: We hope that the research we conduct during the project will provide us with a better understanding particularly of the degree of our direct interventions effectiveness, including the impact it has on children's literacy levels and engagement. This will help us refine and improve our programs.
2. Improved teacher training: We hope to identify areas where we can improve our teacher training program to better support the implementation of our literacy program. This will help us have a solid, working program that we can pitch to potential partners and the Kenyan government to implement even in resource-limited schools.
3. Improved evidence base: We are really looking forward to strengthening the evidence base of the programs we provide as this will not only increase the credibility of our approach but will also help us in securing funding, expanding our reach in the future and attracting more committed volunteers to help with the children.

Long-term outcomes:

1. Improved literacy levels: Our ultimate goal is to improve the literacy levels of children in Kenya who have little to no access to quality education. After refining and improving our program through the LEAP Project, we are confident that we can achieve greater impact and help more children develop strong foundational skills in reading and writing. We are looking forward to our research outcomes being used as evidence base for literacy studies and interventions by different renown and growing organizations in Kenya.
2. Expansion of our program to other parts of Kenya: With a strengthened evidence base and an improved program, we hope to expand our solution and reach more children across Kenya. This will help us to have a greater impact in improving literacy levels in the country considering 1 in every 10 children in grade 8 cannot read a simple story. And these results are even worse for a lot of regions outside Nairobi meaning they are in great need of interventions. 
3. Sustainable program: We look forward to creating a sustainable program that can continue to provide support for children's literacy development for years to come and can confidently be used by different organizations, schools and government entities. Our inspiration is the National Literacy Trust in England. By improving our program and expanding our reach, we hope to establish a strong foundation for the long-term success of our solution.
4. Run full-time. We currently only work with children 3 Sundays a month because of the need to maintain employment to sustain the costs of our activities and not having funds to pay volunteers who can work with the kids through the week. Building our credibility and evidence through the LEAP project may ultimately lead to bigger funding that can help us become fully sustainable hence greater impact.