The project is meant to support smallholder farmers as a means of securing livelihoods for communities now & into the future by laying the foundations for (re) building a more secure and more sustainable food system in Ukraine and neighbouring countries that are having to host the massive influx of refugees.

The Ukraine Food Security Foundation (UFSF) initiative is a response to a need and opportunity identified by the Ukrainian Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food to support innovation and organization of community-oriented producer-consumer arrangements with smallholder farmers as partners aimed at increasing food security by:

• operating food systems in conflict zones and (re) building them in post-conflict situations,

• generating livelihoods for displaced individuals and groups from war zones and integrating them into host communities in ways that benefit all those affected

• regenerating and bringing back into farming areas devastated by the war (incl. urban farming) and new areas subdivided out of large farm holdings

• designing & implementing food security policies, regulations and programmes to accelerate Ukraine’s EU accession.

FIO CORPORATION
COUNTRY: RWANDA
PROJECT: STRENGTHENING OF PRIMARY HEALTH CARE IN RWANDA
PILOT PROJECT: TESTING INNOVATIONS FOR ADDRESSING GENDER EQUALITY IN THE PHC SYSTEM

INTRODUCTION

Rwanda is being challenged with an increased prevalence of malaria that is associated with low income areas, non-compliance with bed-net usage and living below 1700 meters of altitude. New interventions are being used in lower income areas, but with questionable results. While available evidence suggests that in the event of equal exposure, adult men and women are equally vulnerable to malaria infection, women tend to be a much higher risk.

The Rwandan Ministry of Health (MoH) is determined to eradicate malaria and is working with the Roll Back Malaria program, and the U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) that is being led by USAID and implemented together with the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Rwandan MoH has a strategy that is focused on 1) vector control; 2) human health including diagnosis and drug-based treatments and prevention; and 3) critical support systems that include supply chains. Within this strategy, there are concerns with data collection and implementation, by NGO partners, at the community-level.

Rwanda is among the few countries to have achieved universal health coverage due to its vision of inclusiveness, equity, and comprehensive and integrated quality service delivery, with a strong focus on primary health care. Within the health sector, Rwanda has been open to financial innovations, such as health insurance and performance-based financing models.

At the district level, government officers sign performance-based contracts with health facilities. Performance against indicators is monitored with quarterly evaluations and through analysis of results in annual reports. While these performance-based models have worked well they do not apply to NGO health partners implementing malaria programs.

THE CHALLENGE

While the MoH has a strong culture of enforcing data-driven decision-making and policy formulation there are challenges in getting timely and accurate community-based information.  The main source of data is the Health Management Information System (HMIS) where data is inputted in health centres and hospitals, and then compiled monthly and transmitted to the centralized HMIS server.  At the moment, paper reports are prepared at community health posts, health centers and local hospitals.  Community Health Workers prepare a monthly report of activities using 13 different forms, all paper-based.   Once the reports are prepared, they will be sent to be digitized and then submitted to the main HMIS. 

Another related challenge is making sure that health partner NGOs are effectively addressing the needs of the community and especially those most vulnerable, such as women and girls.  Poor data and weak data-systems, especially at the local level, impair an adequate understanding of issues impacting the poor, as well as the ability to deliver evidence-based policy and programming.  To have NGO partners maximize the net social benefits of their programs will require the sharing of timely and relevant data.  It will also be important to positively incentivize program partners so that target interventions are prioritized and intended results achieved.

OUR RESPONSE

The pilot project is premised on alignment with existing systems where there are niches for improvement. The pilot project has two innovation solutions – 1) data collection and management, and 2) service delivery incentives that include targeting gender equality issues.

The Fionet software and mobile devices enables community health workers to deliver expert-level testing and clinical case management and having all the data captured, geo-tagged, and uploaded in real time.  The Fionet portal allows for remote supervisors in Kigali to generate real-time managerial insights for program managers to make dynamic adjustments to improve outcomes.  It connects with multiple 3rd party point-of-care devices, such as diagnostic and physiological measurement devices, and uploads all their data.  It also integrates seamlessly with the Rwandan health care HMIS systems.

The technology being deployed is innovative, but to achieve the intended outcomes it is depended on the service delivery system to be working efficiently.  This is especially the case for NGOs that are a partner of the Ministry of Health.  IBG has worked on a performance-based contract methodology that is expected to improve outcome level results.  The IBG methodology focuses on three key areas:

Targeting what Matters - the Fionet mobile devices are a critical part of a performance management system (PMS).  A PMS needs to collect the right data, that is, data that will drive the team’s understanding of whether and how the program is achieving critical results.  Impact Bridges Group works with NGO teams to shift the measurement focus towards generating real-time managerial insights for program managers to make dynamic adjustments to improve gender equality and other program outcomes.  This is unique, as many NGOs are focused on measuring outputs.

Use of Incentives to Improve Gender Equality - in a similar manner to the performance contract implemented by the Ministry of Health, Impact Bridges Group will tie funding to implementing organizations to agreed-upon results.  In other words, the implementing NGOs will be financially rewarded for achieving the intended results and not for having good intentions to do so.  Financial and other incentives are used to have NGO implementers to be explicitly focused on finding the best means of providing services to marginalized groups of women and girls.  It is expected that implementing organizations will have a mindset shift in that these women will be seen as clients and given the utmost attention in providing services.

Creating Space for Innovation and Maximizing Results - Impact Bridges Group will design the payment instrument so that it offers the space, needed by the implementing organization(s), for adapting and iterating the program design and delivery practices.  The focus is on achieving improved outcomes for marginalized women and girls and implementers are encouraged to change activities, based on the evidence from the data collected, in an effort to further improve services.  Unlike traditional programs that hold implementing organizations to the proposal plans, the pilot project will provide flexibility and freedom to pursue a range of strategies, based on evidence, that are expected to achieve greater impact.   

Country: Ghana
Project: Science, Technology, Engineering, & Mathematics (STEM)

Intro to PEN’s CEO – Heather Beem

Heather holds a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. During her time in graduate school and at D-Lab, she developed a passion for STEM education and indigenous innovation. At D-Lab, she co-founded and co-instructed D-Lab: Education in addition to mentoring students from other D-Lab classes.

While at MIT, she began developing the Practical Education Network (PEN) with a team of fellow students and others. They won numerous competitions including the MIT Sloan Africa Innovate Business Plan Competition (2015), IEEE/IBM SmarterPlanet Challenge, 1st Place Curriculum (2012), and the MIT Global Challenge/IDEAS Competition (2011).

Since graduating in 2015, Heather has been leading PEN in their pursuit of scaling experiential learning in resource-limited settings. She has worked with hundreds of students and teachers from Boston to Ghana to Peru.

The Challenge:

The COVID-19 pandemic has upended children's lives in unprecedented ways. Hundreds of millions of children are spending months away from their classrooms, and for the majority of students in West Africa, no school means no learning. According to UNICEF, the longer that children (especially the vulnerable ones) stay away from school, the less likely they are to return. It is critical to provide students alternative ways to learn and rebuild their routine.
After recording the first two cases of COVID-19 in March, the Government of Ghana closed all schools. We project that late 2020/early 2021 is when schools will re-open and be fully operational again. An estimated 5-8 million Ghanaian students are completely devoid of structured learning opportunities. The existing gaps in quality education between West Africa and the developed world are being exacerbated through this crisis and threaten to have ripple effects on the region's ability to develop in years to come.

Our Response:

PEN is raising $300,000 in emergency funding to roll out a suite of digital STEM educational content for students and teachers in Ghana. We are leveraging an extensive set of curriculum-aligned, practical STEM activities (1,000+) and a strong network of teachers (3,000+) to rapidly translate existing content and deploy at scale. This will not only ensure that learning continues, but it will restore hope for students and purpose for teachers, whilst enabling the government to concentrate on COVID-19 mitigation efforts. Once schools re-open, these activities will be blended with PEN's existing in-person work, so as to employ improved modes of disseminating STEM education across the continent.

1. Bringing STEM to Homes through radio, videos, animations, graphical instructions, and booklets to enable students to cover the sequence of science content that they would have been covering in school, and in a hands-on manner. All PEN content leverages simple materials, including those that can be found in a typical Ghanaian home. We also include tips for parents to support their children and engage with them in carrying out the activities;

2. Bringing STEM to Teachers through online training via Zoom. Our network of 3,000+ teachers is on standby, eager to receive ideas for how they can continue reaching their students with hands-on STEM content. They will be trained in digital literacy and given templates for engaging their students on various channels (WhatsApp, radio, etc. depending on location);

3. Simplifying STEM through PEN's Resource Manuals, which contain thousands of hands-on activities using local materials and which are aligned to the national curriculum. These manuals will be sent first to teachers in the rural communities.

About Practical Education Network:

Practical Education Network (PEN) equips West African STEM teachers to employ inquiry-based pedagogies in their classrooms, utilizing locally available materials. PEN has developed thousands of hands-on STEM activities that leverage low-cost and readily available materials. These were designed with Ghanaian teachers, and we are now working towards sharing these widely with teachers and parents globally, as they seek meaningful modes of engaging students while stuck at home during the COVID-19 crisis. PEN was born at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), while the founder was pursuing her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering.

Since 2014, we have trained 3,000+ STEM teachers on our practical pedagogical approach to STEM, impacted over 590,000 students and equipped 100 teachers to attain the status of PEN Trainer. This is accomplished through our holistic teacher training program, where teachers learn, design, and share MIT-style, hands-on activities. The activities are fully aligned to the national curricula and created from low-cost, locally available materials.

PEN's Impact

PEN's activities have been recognized globally, and achieved successes locally. Notably is the call from educational policy makers in Ghana for PEN to participate in the revision of national curriculum for basic schools. Spearheaded by National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NaCCA), PEN infused portions of its hands-on content into Ghana's new primary and junior high school national science curricula.

A controlled study conducted to ascertain the impact of PEN's approach to STEM on students and teachers in the Ghanaian Junior High School classroom by Michigan Technological University in the 2017/2018 academic year revealed that our approach had a beneficial impact on students' classroom environment, attitudes towards science, and improved outcomes in standardized test scores. Teachers trained through the study were found to be very comfortable with setup of materials and confident in offering hands-on delivery using our method. Comparing outcomes between the experimental and control schools' performance on the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE), pupils whose teachers had PEN's hands-on STEM training increased their performance by 28.78%, which is a 97% higher improvement than those who had no PEN training (14.6%). The former group also reported their attitudes towards science improving 141% more than the latter group, over the course of the academic year.

http://www.practicaleducationnetwork.com/

Alternative ways to give:

For gifts by check: Address your check to Impact Bridges Group, write Practical Education Network Project in the memo section of the check, and send it to Impact Bridges Group, 5434 Driscoll Drive. Manotick, ON, K4M 1E3

Gifts by wire transfer or to contribute other types of property: Email Impact Bridges Group at: info@impactbridgesgroup.com or phone (416) 558 1954.