USAID/El Salvador : strategic objective no. 1 -- expanded access and economic opportunity for El Salvador"s rural poor : results package no. 1 -- better educated and trained rural residents : early childhood family education (EDIFAM), activity no. 519-0433 -- new activity document (NAD)

The Salvadoran Institute for the Protection of Minors (ISPM) will serve as the key counterpart institution. The activity comprises four intervention areas. A first intervention will improve the technical skills of formal and non-formal early childhood caregivers through a continued program of human capacity development. This intervention will employ a training of trainers strategy due to the paucity of training opportunities for caregivers in El Salvador and the lack of standardized curricula for those that do exist. Three types of institutions will participate in this intervention: NGOs that provide direct services to communities; Government of El Salvador (GOES) entities such as the ISPM and the Ministries of Education and of Health, which provide training to local caregivers and to NGO and municipal promoters and which may assume a more proactive and normative role in the area of early childhood development (ECD) training; and universities, one or more of which may be interested in establishing a formal degree program in ECD. Complementary programs to support the change agents produced as a result of primary target group training are also contemplated. A second intervention will increase the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor skills of children 0-6, through new ECD materials that target, respectively, caregivers and young, at-risk children. Materials will be designed to stimulate children to make creative use of resources in everyday activities, parents to act proactively in their children"s development, communities to establish formal or semi-formal means of providing services, and organizations to incorporate high- quality, nationally validated, and scientifically proven resources in their programs. The experience of the Strengthening Basic Education (SABE) project (5190357) will be tapped, as will the experience in ECD materials production and distance education from the countries in the region such as Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Panama, and Bolivia. The third intervention will strengthen the capabilities of key public and private institutions in the ECD sector to: implement more effective programs; control and utilize funds more efficiently; become more attractive to sources of financing; increase technical expertise; produce a higher quality of caregiver; demonstrate capacity for strategic planning and institutional coordination; supervise, monitor, and evaluate programs; generate useful research; become sustainable as organizations; and involve themselves in the policy process. The focus on institutional strengthening is especially crucial in the area of ECD, as the national reality is one of insufficient public and private funding at the national level, a relatively weak GOES institution (ISPM), scattered and uncoordinated programs, a multitude of NGOs whose services differ substantially in design and quality, and minimal sector leadership. A fourth intervention will increase the awareness of the importance of child-raising skills both for those who care for the youngest children and for the public at large. For ECD to be successful, parents must be convinced that they must participate, whether by sending their children to an institutional setting or by incorporating ECD strategies in the home. Efforts will also be directed at supporting ECD centers in places of work (something urgently needed in El Salvador, yet still almost non-existent); promoting coverage in ECD by the media; and improving the national policy environment for ECD. A possible further intervention area will examine strategies to ease the financial constraints of targeted families, e.g., promotion of microenterprise activities.