ECD Connect

ECD Connect is an impact venture currently incubated within the DG Murray Trust, a philanthropic foundation and public innovator dedicated to tackling structural inequality in South Africa. 

"Early childhood experiences have a profound impact on brain development – affecting learning, health, behaviour, and, ultimately, productivity and income, and this helps to generate the human capital needed for economies to diversify and grow." (World Bank)

In the first few years, a child’s brain develops faster than at any other stage of life, and there is overwhelming evidence indicating that the earlier an investment is made into a child’s development the greater the returns in the long-run, for the individual and for society. 

Unfortunately, despite the critical importance of early childhood development (ECD), it is a sector which has been historically overlooked in terms of policy and funding, and access to quality ECD services is limited, particularly across the developing world.

In South Africa, the government spends a comparatively significant portion of its budget on basic education, but only around 3% of that is allocated to ECD. Whilst formal schooling is compulsory, less than 40% of 3-5-year-olds are enrolled in early learning programmes (ELPs) and less than half of those enrolled are developmentally on-track. To make matters worse, 1 in 4 children under the age of 5 is nutritionally stunted, cruelly preventing them from reaching their potential.

While there are many programmes in place to address the various issues across the ECD spectrum, it’s clear that more needs to be done to ensure future generations can thrive.

Central to this is engaging with the challenges faced by ECD practitioners - those working directly with young children during the crucial early years of their development (e.g. as teachers or community health workers). Almost half of all early educators in South Africa are underqualified, whilst more than a fifth have no qualifications at all. In addition, some 90% of ECD teachers earn below minimum wage, causing many to seek opportunities elsewhere, further compromising any efforts to train up this under-skilled, yet critical, workforce. In the health space, community health workers (CHWs) continue to experience “limited financial, logistical and health systems support,... precarious employment, low and no pay… and belittling treatment in clinics”.

Due to severe resource constraints, especially in countries of the global south, large-scale training and regular face-to-face supervision and support simply isn’t viable, and alternative solutions must be explored to help bridge that gap.

From a sector standpoint, the last three years has seen an influx of data to dramatically enhance our understanding of the ECD landscape in South Africa, with the release of the ECD Census 2021, Thrive-by-Five Index and the ECD Baseline Audit. The process of developing the national Early Childhood Administration and Reporting System (eCares) is underway and the next Thrive by Five data collection is planned in 2024. The South African ECD data landscape is in sharper focus than ever, however a critical gap remains; namely a mechanism to regularly refresh these periodic initiatives with near real-time, child-specific, site-based (albeit self-reported) data relating to broad ECD outcomes, such as health and education.

ECD Connect is a licence-free, open-source, customisable digital platform that has been developed to assist ECD practitioners (and the organisations who support them) in improving access to, and quality of, crucial early childhood services, including health and education.  

The platform is a progressive web app (PWA) that can be accessed via a browser, is suitable for low-end smartphones, requires minimal data, and can also be used offline for up to 30 days. 

As a digital work companion, the platform offers ECD practitioners in education and health a range of tools to assist them in their jobs, including:  

• Classroom management tools, such as multilingual educational resources, daily programmes, attendance trackers, assessment and other pedagogical tools.

• Business management tools, such as income and expense trackers, calendar and scheduling, venue and other checklists.

• Patient/Client folders, including pre- and post-natal home visiting tools, health reports, clinic referrals.

• In-app courses for ongoing professional development. 

• Community of practice and incentives programme.

The quality of early learning programmes (ELPs) depends on several factors, including programme content (e.g. evidence-based and locally appropriate curriculum, and structured routines), resources and tools (e.g. play and learning materials, and child progress tracking) and structural features (e.g. appropriate adult-child ratios and group sizes). Effectively addressing these in low-income settings is a hurdle that is yet to be overcome in a large enough way. ECD Connect is designed with these key ingredients in mind, while motivating, reminding, rewarding, and connecting practitioners to their peers. 

Using these same behaviour change strategies, it also provides CHWs with an effective way to identify growth faltering early through tools, training and resources, thus optimising home visits with pregnant women and children. 

For organisations supporting ECD centres and practitioners, the platform provides them with access to near-real time, site-level data, and a means for them to better monitor and respond to their programmes. 

A modular approach to development has been adopted, making it possible to support the broader community of champions working towards the holistic development of young children across multiple domains, such as:

• parenting support, 

• climate resilience, 

• child protection, 

• early intervention services

This opens the possibility for de-identified data to be shared between programmes, resulting in enhanced coordination of services and ensuring that fewer young children fall through the cracks.

ECD Connect serves early childhood development (ECD) practitioners, the organisations working to support them, and the often vulnerable young children and caregivers who depend heavily on their services. 

The platform provides tools, resources, and a connection to their community of practice that equips practitioners to be more effective in their roles and to develop both as individuals and as a collective. 

Research in the field has shown that by raising standards of professionalism and improving outcomes, practitioners receive greater recognition for their work and increased demand for their services, allowing them to generate more value for themselves and the sector as a whole, leading to further improvement and/or scaling of ECD programmes. 

Wider access to high-quality ECD services has immeasurable downstream impacts for the future prospects of young children, but it also provides upliftment to mothers and caregivers by giving them the opportunity to re-enter the workforce.      

By helping practitioners to scale and improve the quality of their services, ECD Connect benefits not just the young children and caregivers as recipients of these crucial services, but also the practitioners themselves, many of whom operate in exceptionally challenging circumstances despite playing such a critical role in our communities.

For organisations working to support ECD practitioners, ECD Connect is a customisable, programme-agnostic tool that allows organisations to use their own branding and logos, and to upload their own content and resources. The platform enables organisations to better connect with their on-the-ground programmes, gathering real time monitoring data and facilitating regular feedback and engagement. By improving the efficiency and effectiveness of their programmes, organisations will be better-placed to access additional resources, and to further extend their reach into the vast number of communities that desperately need support. 

Our team lead is a seasoned anthropologist with extensive experience in early childhood development (ECD) and education. On completing her studies, Jade established and led a small educational nonprofit in the rural Eastern Cape, and thereafter spent five years at the helm of the award-winning national reading for enjoyment campaign, Nal’ibali, increasing annual reach six-fold to 160,000 children in reading clubs. 

We have a diverse, fully remote in-house technical team, led by a solutions architect with a strong background in education IT systems, as well as a dedicated UX designer/business analyst specialising in education.       

The ECD Connect project is incubated within the DG Murray Trust, a public innovator supporting multiple initiatives within ECD in South Africa, providing an ecosystem where individual projects collaborate towards achieving broader sector outcomes. This means that ECD Connect not only has access to a diverse network of potential partners and stakeholders that are critical to its long-term success, but it exists in an environment that can provide support and guidance as the needs of the project evolve.

ECD Connect has leveraged the ecosystem to conduct extensive research and user testing in multiple target communities around South Africa.

ECD Connect is currently working with two anchor tenants that serve as pilot projects in education and health. These are Funda App for SmartStart, a social franchise with over 9,500 trained and licensed practitioners who implement high-quality, standardised early learning programmes, and CHW Connect for the Grow Great Champions campaign against childhood nutritional stunting, consisting of around 3,000 community health workers (CHWs). Both organisations are currently rolling out to their respective networks.

ECD Connect is planning to launch a white label version of its education platform in the second half of 2024, which will be available to both supporting organisations and independent early learning programmes and practitioners.  

ECD Connect is an ambitious undertaking in that it has been designed for sector-wide adoption across multiple services in early childhood development (ECD), and can prospectively be implemented in multiple territories. The long-term success of the platform hinges on bringing together a diverse array of public and private entities working toward the common goal of increasing accessibility and quality of ECD services. Whilst ECD Connect is fortunate enough to be incubated within an ecosystem of complementary ECD programmes, we are still a small team. 

The platform is designed for scale, and it is crucial for us to both connect with the right partners and to be highly selective in our plans and actions during the next phases of the project. We believe the programme will offer invaluable guidance and insights from individuals (and fellow participants) with a global perspective on how best to navigate the road ahead and ensure that ECD Connect meets the vision of our founding partners. In addition, we anticipate the programme to provide a considerable boost to our profile and serve as a conduit to funders and implementing partners that can provide the necessary leverage for ECD Connect to scale.

What separates ECD Connect from other platforms and tools used in the sector is that it caters to specific functions across multiple services within early childhood development (such as health and education), and it is programme-agnostic, meaning organisations operating in the sector can white label the platform and take ownership of branding, content and resources.  

The aim of creating a multi-tenanted platform that collects data across the broader sector means that one can potentially track a child’s movement across different programmes and ensure that more children are able to receive the care that they need. At the same time, if the platform generates significant uptake there is the possibility of contributing to the ECD data ecosystem at a district, regional or national level, which could offer the necessary insights to motivate clearer decisions on policy and budget.   

For users, the platform has been designed with inclusivity and community at the forefront: 

• The technology has been developed such that it is accessible in low-resource environments, including core functionality available offline for up to 30 days.  

• Resources will be made available in 11 different languages.

• The language and user interaction has been crafted with a local context familiar to target users.  

• Community is one of the pillars around which the platform was created, and aside from providing tools and resources to assist practitioners as individuals, the platform seeks to connect users to others in their community of practice, thereby strengthening the local network as whole.

ECD Connect aims to benefit individuals and organisations in their work, but the design has carefully considered numerous ways it can contribute as part of a much larger stakeholder ecosystem promoting access to quality ECD services. 

When an ECD practitioner becomes a regular user of the platform, the quality of their service offering should begin to improve as they learn to make use of the various resources and tools that our research has shown are currently not easily accessible. 

If practitioners are equipped to offer better services, they will feel more empowered and better able to communicate the value of their work, thus receiving greater recognition for the services they offer and raising the bar for what they can expect to receive.   

If a supporting organisation (e.g. NGO) successfully implements the platform across their network of ECD practitioners, the likely improvement in quality will scale across the programme. The data collected by the platform will provide site-level insights contributing to an overall picture of programme outcomes, the success of which will enable these organisations to secure additional funding to scale their programmes. 

For funders, if they are provided with access to on-the-ground data that provides conclusive evidence that their investments have generated impact, they will be better positioned to allocate additional funding and resources to help improve quality and access to ECD services. 

ECD Connect’s impact goals for the short-term are:

1. To increase practitioners’ motivation, sense of connectedness and, where relevant, propensity to complete administrative tasks.

2. To improve organisations’ ability to monitor and support practitioners, as well as to report on site-level activities. 

We are currently monitoring uptake and usage of our pilot projects with SmartStart and Grow Great. What are looking for is data on the following:

• Number of registered users and frequency of logins.

• Number of children and/or recipients registered on the platform.

• Level of usage and daily/weekly activity, such as tracking attendance or updating case files.

We are planning to conduct an in-depth research study later in the year that will include direct interviews with users to better understand the impact of the platform on their day-to-day activities in line with the above goals.

Given that the target beneficiaries for ECD Connect are primarily from low-resource environments, it was vitally important that the platform be compatible for low-end smartphones (and across multiple brands), use minimal data, and be usable offline for extended periods. In addition, it was also decided that all development tools needed to be “free-to-use”, to avoid costly subscription fees.

In order to meet these requirements, the following open-source technology stack was implemented: 

• The core technology is React and Redux using GraphQL to communicate with the Microsoft .NET Core backend, which is supported by a PostgreSQL database.

• The front-end was built as a Progressive Web App (PWA) to ensure it was not platform specific but would support multiple browsers and various mobile devices. 

• To support the required offline capabilities, it was built as an "offline first" application making extensive use of Redux, with data synchronisation to the back-end happening whenever a connection to the back-end server is available.   

The modular design of the platform allows for customisation for organisational users and has catered for “intentional re-use” of similar functionality to be used by different services in the sector, e.g. there is shareability of the Moodle-based LMS for “professional development”, as well as the “community” function of ECD Connect, across both the health and education applications. Additionally, support manuals related to the codebase and deployment factors will be made freely available to organisations that wish to customise the tool to better suit their needs.

ECD Connect is currently hosted on two servers within our parent organisation (and acting super-administrator), DG Murray Trust, and can support scaling to a number of users greater than the estimated total addressable market in South Africa. 

Our team consists of 4 full-time and 6 part-time team members:

1x full-time product manager

2x full-time developers

1x full-time UX designer / business analyst

2x 4-day per week developers

1x 4-day per week stakeholder engagement & marketing analyst

1x part-time solutions architect

1x part-time scrum master

1x part-time systems analyst

Just over 4 years. Planning began in 2019, but the project was initiated in early-2020.

ECD Connect is a fully remote, woman-led, majority-female project incorporating a diverse array of team-members from South Africa and Brazil. 

We have intentionally created opportunities for team members to go out to the field and understand the context that they deliver their solutions to, and that changes context for what is eventually built.

We have liaised extensively with our target users (who are primarily women from disadvantaged backgrounds across the urban-rural spectrum) and to assist with the process we have contracted parties with close ties to the target users' communities. 

During the launch and roll out phases we plan to ramp up engagement with target users and will seek to onboard additional on-the-ground resources in the target users' communities. 

ECD Connect is a grant-funded initiative that provides tools and resources to target beneficiaries (ECD practitioners) through a mobile platform, at no cost. The target beneficiaries can use the platform to upskill themselves and improve the quality of their services to young children and caregivers. By using the platform, target beneficiaries generate critically important site-level data that can be utilised by supporting organisations and NGOs to better monitor and respond to their programmes, whilst funders are able to receive specific, contextual insights into the impacts of their investments.  

The platform will forever be free-to-use for target beneficiaries but will likely be available to supporting organisations on a subscription basis after a given period of usage.

ECD Connect was initiated with funding from the Global Innovation Fund, and has subsequently received further funding from the Department of Science & Innovation (through the Technology Innovation Agency), as well as from our parent organisation, the DG Murray Trust.

In the short-term, the primary goal is uptake and adoption of the white label educational application of ECD Connect, which will be distributed to organisations and independent practitioners. The platform will not be generating revenue from its primary users, the target beneficiaries, more than 70% of whom operate independently (in South Africa), but will seek to charge a subscription fee to NGOs and supporting organisations after a predetermined period of usage. 

Outside of organisational use, the value of ECD Connect will be found in the data it collects, but this will only become relevant after reaching a certain number of users, whereby the data itself could become a product in its own right for sector bodies, research organisations and government entities. 

The platform is also in no way limited by borders, and there have been discussions with multinational programmes about potentially funding implementation in other territories.