Gindegi Goron in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh

• In Event: Early Childhood Innovations in Conflict and Crisis Contexts during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Proposal

With a history of persecution beginning in the early 1990s, the latest and most severe series of violence has driven a total 884,000 Rohingya people into exile and statelessness since 2012. Many of the displaced Rohingya now reside in 34 highly congested refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar on the coast of Bangladesh. In an area vulnerable to natural disasters and where malnutrition was already a threat to young children, the COVID-19 pandemic led to a third crisis on top of displacement and natural disasters. Colleagues from the icddr,b had vast experience with the use of RUL in other parts of the country successfully. In response to COVID-19 risk factors and lockdowns, the IRC and icddr,b designed a holistic remote intervention that uses phone calls and interactive voice response (IVR) messages to promote nurturing care, focusing particularly on health, nutrition, caregiver wellbeing, and early learning opportunities. A pre-post survey demonstrated that more caregivers reported engaging in play with their children at the endline compared with baseline. Cost data and promising monitoring and evaluation survey data will be analyzed to understand the feasibility, initial response from caregivers and other factors relating to scalability of the intervention.

Authors

• Ahsan Mahmud, IRC

• Katelin Wilton, International Rescue Committee