| Early Childhood Family Education Activity (EDIFAM)
El Salvador
Inside EDIFAM
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The Early Childhood Family Education Activity (EDIFAM) is designed to improve the care and education of Salvadoran children, particularly poor and rural children, aged zero through six, in El Salvador. The four integrated components of the project aim to:
- Improve the technical skills of formal and non-formal early childhood caregivers and educators;
- Increase the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor skills of children ages zero through six;
- Strengthen the ability of public and private sector institutions to provide early childhood care and education (ECCE) services with improved quality; and
- Increase the general awareness of the importance of child rearing skills.
While children are the ultimate beneficiary of each component, EDIFAM’s multilevel strategy targets five distinct audience groups:
- Educators and caregivers benefit from training cascades designed and implemented through components one and two, empowering them to use more effective methodologies. EDIFAM is directly training over 1,700 adults, with those trainees passing on skills and information to approximately 62,000 adult caregivers in various settings.
- Parent and community caregivers and untrained preschool teachers are particularly targeted in the component for awareness campaign and gain increased technical skills through the component one training cascade. This group receives mutually reinforcing messages from the two activities.
- Children and their learning environments are affected by all four components, most immediately by the component two training cascade, which trains teachers in the use of a recently developed early childhood curriculum. By integrating the curriculum with the active, child-centered pedagogy learned through their training, teachers and caregivers create stimulating learning environments and encourage child development.
- Government institutions. Component three activities develop capacity in the governmental agencies responsible for ECCE, primarily the Salvadoran Institute for Integrated Development of Children and Youth (ISNA), thus strengthening the quality of all ECCE programs. EDIFAM supports two high-level policymaking committees and helps ISNA develop a communications network and a coherent, nationwide approach to the care and education of children.
- General public. The public awareness campaign established through component four uses a television advertising campaign with accompanying posters and instructional materials to raise awareness of the importance of quality in ECCE both at home and in centers and classrooms. EDIFAM has employed innovative collaboration among researchers, educators, and producers to design a campaign based in current child development research and tailored to the Salvadoran context.
EQUIP1 Partners
Education Development Center
Save the Children
Sesame Workshop
Award Amount
$2.750 million
Award Duration
September 8, 2003 to June 30, 2005
Key Personnel
Chief of Party: Dr. Leesa Kaplan Nunes, lkedifam@integra.com.sv
Teacher Training and Curriculum Specialist: Rosa Virginia Sanchez, rvsedifam@integra.com.sv
Early Childhood Development Specialist: Margarita Guardado, mgedifam@integra.com.sv
USAID CTO
Carmen de Henríquez, chenriquez@usaid.gov
For more information, contact:
Dan Pier, dpier@edc.org
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• EQUIP1 EDIFAM Final Report
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