Scaling Early Childhood Development in Crisis: Insights from the Ahlan Simsim Initiative and Lessons in Equity and Partnership

• In Event: ECD and Education Quality Improvement at Scale: Centering Equity in Design, Data, and Developing Partnerships

Proposal

The Ahlan Simsim initiative is a collaboration between the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and Sesame Workshop launched in 2018 to respond to the needs of children affected by the Syrian refugee crisis and has since expanded to serve both refugee and host communities children across Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and northern Syria. Integrating educational media with direct services for families, Ahlan Simsim provides transformational early childhood development and playful learning that is now part of daily life for millions of children in the Middle East. As of April 2024, Ahlan Simsim has reached over 3.5 million children and caregivers through direct support in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria and over 29 million children through the award-winning locally produced Arabic-language version of Sesame Street airing across the Middle East and North Africa.
Two recently released reports, Insights from the Ahlan Simsim Scaling Journey and Transforming Tomorrow: Innovative Solutions for Children in Crisis, provide critical learnings on how Ahlan Simsim effectively scaled early childhood development interventions in MENA over the past six years, reaching over 3.5 million children and caregivers, with 90% of this reach achieved in partnership with formal system actors, predominantly government ministries. Findings in the reports underscore the importance of understanding local systems, fostering local ownership, and building collaborative partnerships to design interventions that respond to the national priorities and needs, and reach children and families at scale.
IRC teams also explored questions of equity resulting in valuable learning and forward facing questions about how we understand equity when designing interventions at scale, and what working within existing systems means for reaching the most vulnerable and marginalized segments of the population, those often excluded from formal systems by factors such as displacement, ethnicity, disabilities, and socio-economic status. In the Ahlan Simsim experience, analysis indicated the powerful combination of systems-strengthening work with formal systems alongside partnership with local NGOs, and other innovative ways to expand access. This work spans what traditionally falls into “development” and “humanitarian” workstreams, driven by the needs of children and ability of flexibility in program approaches to reach them where they are. Equity in scaling remains a critical question for humanitarian and development actors.

Authors

• Heidi Rosbe, International Rescue Committee (IRC)

• Chantale Kallas, International rescue committee

• Katie Maeve Murphy, International Rescue Committee