First 6 Years Connected: Reaching Marginalized Families

Marginalized families in Turkey have poor access to ECD information and services, and there is a bigger disparity for the five million Syrian refugees facing language and cultural barriers. A free mobile phone app that pushes daily alerts to the user has tremendous potential to close this disparity.

Our First6Years app provides information on parenting and early childhood development—both in Turkish and Arabic. The app aims to close the information gap caused by language barriers and lack of access to services, also contribute to gender-equal family environments by engaging fathers as well. 

One shortcoming of the app, however, is that its user interface is not user-friendly enough to establish a successful onboarding or promote related content with the users' interest. We propose to improve onboarding and linking of related content in the app to better engage the users and provide much greater benefit to families in need.

Poverty begets a plethora of inequalities, one of which is poor access to information and services for early childhood development (ECD). The poorest populations in Turkey, including an estimated 5 million Syrian refugees, are facing this risk. Almost half of the 3.5 million registered Syrians are children, and 31% of them are aged between 0 and 4. Around 400,000 school-aged Syrian children remain out of formal education, and only 36% of 5-year-olds have access to preschool education. There is an urgent need for innovative methods to support this population’s early childhood development as a most effective way for their peaceful integration. To address the educational needs of (at least) particularly those two-thirds of the preschool-aged population, as well as their parents, there are limited offerings in their native language.

  This issue is exacerbated by the lack of men’s engagement in child development as these families’ primary point of contact with the public realm. ACEV’s 2016 study revealed that 91% of men in Turkey identify mothers as children’s primary caregiver. Nevertheless, one out of three fathers in Turkey want more information on child development. The First6Years app aims to address these issues at once by reaching and engaging at-risk populations.

AÇEV has extensive experience with mothers, fathers and young children from disadvantaged backgrounds through long-term, face-to-face programs, including an intensive Summer Preschool Program for Syrian refugee children with no prior preschool education and about to start formal schooling and a Mother Support Program for Syrian mothers. The First6Years app, which has reached over 500,000 downloads, is now provided in both Turkish and Arabic. Beyond this app, AÇEV has reached more than a million beneficiaries via face-to-face trainings in Turkey and 14 countries worldwide, besides many millions through its TV programs, online portals and advocacy efforts.

AÇEV typically conducts need assessments on its target population before implementing any project. As for the app, AÇEV constantly tracks user behavior with Google Analytics and collects insight from App Market reviews. We positioned our solution based on expert feedback from a digital consultancy agency based on user behavior and user experience on how the app’s UX can be upgraded. The planned upgrades were chosen to improve onboarding and content linking of the application aiming better usability of the most useful features. Once the app provides an easier experience, we expect more families to use the app, and spend more time exploring its offerings.

We propose a free mobile app that delivers ECD information lacking in the millions of the most marginalized families in Turkey, including refugees. The app will provide caregivers information on ECD to improve child social emotional and cognitive outcomes, while closing the information gap caused by language barriers, cultural norms, and lack of access to services by engaging caregivers to support ECD—with a special section for fathers.

Our innovation, therefore, will be based on AÇEV's "First6Years" app with its 500,000+ users since its launch in 2014. The app provides up-to-date information based on AÇEV's original content with evaluated impact across 25 years and multiple cultural contexts. Available via Google Play and the iTunes Store, First6Years provides practical and immediate support for all families through push notifications and a web portal, supported with multimedia, including videos by our partner, Harvard Center on the Developing Child.

Our solution ensures to engage a neglected figure in child development, fathers, seeking to engage them with information and provide tools to promote their involvement. Our innovation will therefore make an existing app accessible to disadvantaged communities worldwide and be gender transformative as it also speaks directly to fathers. The solution stands out because it presents a visionary solution to education and school readiness inequalities for marginalized communities by taking advantage of increasing availability of smartphone technology. Smart phone use in Turkey has increased from 86% to 92% within a year which indicates an increased demand for mobile technologies by all social strata.

The app, while promoting home-based involvement of caregivers in their children’s school readiness, is also a technological innovation that will be free for end-users, cost-effective to scale up, and adapted for Arabic-speaking refugee families in the Middle East. ACEV’s NGO networks and corporate partners including mobile operators will promote and distribute the app, reaching millions of families. It is also a business innovation, creating demand by forging partnerships with refugee organizations, I-NGOs, and the private sector.

This new phase aims for the app to engage more users and for longer, since the identified issues in user-onboarding and content-linking will be fixed, upgrading the app to an easy-to-use, engaging manual for all caregivers. Part of the funds will be used to announce the new interface over social media with pay-per-download advertisement, which will help this valuable content to reach the intended audiences, hugely expanding its current reach.

Our concept brings innovation on multiple grounds: Our primary goal in applying is to make accessible to the most in-need an innovative app. What our 5-year-old mobile app lacks to reach these populations and to better support all parents and young children is an improved interface, which we hope to fund through the MIT Solve prize. Our vision is not to only create a platform that helps caregivers find relevant information about childcare, but to offer this information even before caregivers seek it proactively. Following this vision, we will focus on app content and user behavior, and optimize for the best information flows.

First6Years’ exclusive section for fathers brings innovation by challenging the gender norms that underpin men’s lack of involvement in fatherhood. Despite increasing awareness on gender equal parenting, fathers still do not get the attention and support they need to be involved in their children’s lives. Our app aims to challenge harmful gender norms by promoting men’s equal responsibility and influence in child development.

Our app also brings AÇEV’s expertise into the lives of displaced Arabic speaking communities, the largest of which are Syrian refugees living in Turkey, where AÇEV is based. This approach is innovative in being the only mobile app offering on early childhood for this population. Since we believe that work on early childhood education, which involves support for disadvantaged parents, can be a powerful equalizer, we hope that making this technology available to refugee families will support their peaceful integration.

The current state of information structure in the First6Years application is one where users share the birth date of the child. The crucial content we provide for the user has two categories: one is age and the other is information type such as Video, Game, “Keep in mind,” Development, Communication, Suggestions and Health. Users receive push-notifications of these crucial content relevant to the child’s age.

As the first step of development, we plan to include other relevant content or features, such as surveys, questions, and reminder setting feature, so that the users can access more information relevant to the child’s needs.

The current onboarding process of the application is located at the login screen of the application and is presented in the “feature” area with 5 slides. With an upgrade, we plan to introduce all fields of each screen on the first time users come to that particular screen. Therefore, each field and function will grab the user’s attention and the application will be much easier to navigate.

AÇEV proposes to bring a solution to a two-layered problem, focusing on the second layer for this challenge: The initial layer is that there are limited accessible resources for (a) Arabic-speaking refugee populations and (b) fathers on parenting and early childhood development. AÇEV has addressed this problem by providing an app that encompasses its comprehensive expertise through a multidimensional categorization in early childhood development support that includes information on key areas such as health, social-emotional development and communication. Yet, the second layer of the problem lies in the effectiveness of our existing app. Based on user feedback from our online survey in 2019 (collected from 2500 users) we know that although the app is rich in evidence-based and comprehensive content, its poor onboarding and linking features render it less effective than its potential. Also, with this effective content, we can reach a much wider audience (specifically refugee populations with the Arabic app and fathers with both versions of the app).

With funding and networking support from Solve, we aim to improve the onboarding and content linking features of the app. In addition, we will promote the app on social media and other digital channels, making sure we reach the intended populations, i.e. all parents in need but specifically Arabic-speaking refugee populations and fathers. Through this two-way solution, we expect higher numbers of in-need parents to engage with the app, gain knowledge and skills in parenting and contribute to healthy development of their children during early childhood.

Since its launch in 2014, First6Years has reached a total of 524,903 installs. The total visitor number from June 2018 to June 2019 is 111,715.  Our target download number is 1,000,000 in one year once the project is launched, and in five years we aim to reach a total of 2.5M installs.

Within the next year, we will upgrade the application through an “agile” project management strategy. Our first focus is to complete the currently planned upgrades for the application. In next five years, First6Years app will be re-positioned as a unique brand, instead of only an application. The application will be the main product, yet only a part of the services that we touch the user. Our aim is that the First6Years brand becomes as a child development guide what Google currently is as a search engine.

In the next 5 years ACEV also plans to conduct a comprehensive measuring impact on a variety of domains, seeking to measure increases in knowledge on child development and parenting, since the app primarily focuses on parenting know-how.

Also in our vision for the app is increasing its community building aspect: To facilitate this, we will work on features including location-based services built into the app, resembling local search-and-discovery apps, where parents can get notified of child-and-family-friendly spaces they can visit, such as children’s movies or exhibitions to see. Most importantly, we will create avenues for users of the app to bond over parenthood through a built-in event-planner much like the “events” features on social media.

Finally, the ambitious target of 1 million active users (of both Turkish and Arabic versions) necessitates an aggressive scale up strategy. Once it has made the product more superior, ACEV will employ a social marketing strategy integrating local and international partners, as well as parent influencers.

Funds: Since the First6Years application has limited funds for development and promotion, the application’s operation management also remains limited.

User first: We prioritize users’ well-being and benefits above our business goals. Therefore, it is crucial for us to maximize user gain, which does not always result in a wealthy business model. Yet, we do not view this issue as a barrier we want to overcome but rather a value of ours which we strive to remain cognizant of as we strategize for the efficiency and sustainability of the app.

Accessibility: The First6Years application is open to all segments of the society, and we value every user equally. Yet, as a non-governmental organization we prioritize accessing our main target audience, which has been the lower socioeconomic status and at-risk populations. The barrier in reaching out to these populations lies in their possibly limited access to smartphones, internet data or Wi-Fi connection.

Funds: We are focusing on a new business model where we collaborate with technology and production partners, bringing us an annual or monthly operation fund. We are also receiving consultancy as to how we can improve our business model and possibly diversify funding.

User first: As we view this issue as a core value and not a barrier, we have no current plans to change or overcome it.

Accessibility: Technology providers have always been our sponsors in various projects. Similarly, for the First6Years app our main partner has been the Vodafone Turkey Foundation as part of the Vodafone Telecommunication Company. Since accessibility is not our expertise; we do not plan capacity development for AÇEV but solving this problem will rather involve bringing in tech companies as consultants / partners—maintaining our existing model. Smart phone usage rates will increase organically as it is a very common tool for even the low socioeconomic status. In our collaboration with tech companies, we will be sharing our needs to reach out to our target audience and providing support to our partners on issues such as identifying in-need communities or contact people in sites that we have previously worked.  

Current product operation is managed by the following individuals and teams:

A project manager, an IT Specialist, an education director, a marketing and PR team, an out-source design team, and a software development contractor firm. Our solution will potentially be implemented through a new partnership with a software development company with extensive UX and design expertise.

Since 1994, AÇEV’s programs have targeted all stages of human development and all members of the family from early childhood to parenthood, reaching more than a million beneficiaries through face-to-face and distant program offerings.

ACEV has extensive experience working on father involvement, as well as with refugee populations, and in the past 5 years in offering a mobile app to its target audience. It has globally been a pioneering organization in the engagement of men in the promotion of gender equality and prevention of gender-based violence through its successful program implementation and advocacy on involved fatherhood. It has also been one of the pioneering organizations in responding to the refugee crisis in Turkey, utilizing its unique model of an accelerated summer preschool program to reach those refugee children with no prior preschool education right before they start formal schooling. This model has been found effective through research in improving the school readiness and thus contributing to social integration of Syrian refugee children.

As for the team assigned for this project, our Education Director has an Early Child Education background and has managed the development of the app from day one. Our Project Manager has an Economics background and has produced over 30 digital projects, including websites and mobile applications during his earlier career. Our current and potential new software development companies are globally referenced companies with proven track records. 

Vodafone Turkey Foundation has been our only partner for the First6Years (Turkish) application, promoting the application through various PR events and giving annual support for operation costs.

As for the Arabic version of the app, our current partners are UNICEF, The Southeastern Anatolia Project (GAP) Administration, and the Development Foundation of Turkey. (Translation of content, app development and promotion of the app were funded by UNICEF and the Development Foundation of Turkey with GAP being the overall project partner.)

Our Social Business Model Canvas can be found below:

AÇEV is currently working on reducing the costs, as much as possible through allowing for expenses only in matters of urgency. Also, having a network of partners with high interest on early childhood education and parenting will help us minimize costs. Just as Vodafone has been our sponsor throughout the process, we expect similar collaborations in the future based on our interactions with interested companies from the private sector. We have not yet structured a revenue plan and are currently receiving consultancy on this issue. 

The most critical contribution for AÇEV in being selected a Solver in this prestigious network will be opportunities for networking and collaboration. AÇEV has previously received multiple awards including its work on literacy (by UNESCO) or its overall work on early childhood development, parenting, women empowerment and father involvement (by the Lipman Family Prize). Yet, we are new in the tech arena and international partnerships, especially offered through such a prestigious network as that of MIT’s, will help us greatly in joining forces with possible other “peer” organizations in the field, while also opening up avenues for consultancy and support from expert organizations in the field of Edtech or app technology. Since we are in the Scale stage, this unique contribution by MIT will offer us a leverage in this field, giving us an opportunity to make our work visible and possibly replicating it for other populations in need, globally.

First and foremost, we would like to collaborate with organizations that specialize in user journey, which involves lead generation and user retention. Also, collaborations on digital content production involving multimedia content and style will be very useful for us going forward, since we have strong content expertise but are yet in need of effective ways to reach our audience with this content. Related to this aspect is our need for know-how on more innovative methods for online / digital education (Edtech companies) to reach and engage our target audience and provide them with information support. Therefore, we would like to build collaborations with Edtech organizations with extensive know-how on digital education.