The Challenges

Weak Early Childhood Development indicators in Tunisia are a challenge to the development of the nascent post-revolution state. A few examples below give an indication of the scale of the issue:

• Very low rate of exclusive breastfeeding. Data indicate that 12.5% and 50% of Tunisian mothers choose to stop exclusive breastfeeding before the age of 4 months.

• Obesity and overweight levels are extraordinarily high: 17% of children under five are overweight and 44% are at risk of being overweight.

• 93% of Tunisian children are regularly subjected to violent discipline in the home.

• Almost 50% of children under five never read a book at home in Tunisia.

The net attendance rate for early childhood education (ECE) is still extremely low (49% for children over the age of three)In order to address this challenge, the Ministry of Women and Family Affairs developed and endorsed in 2017 a National multi-sectoral strategy for Early Childhood Development (2017-2025). The second pillar of that strategy, “Family and parental education”, required the development of a comprehensive SBCC strategy addressing behavioural drivers of harmful parenting practices. 

What We Did

To Improve ECD Service Delivery

Local adaptation and roll out of two ECD training curricula across four pilot sites, rooted in international evidence:

• Care for Child Development (CCD curriculum) for ECD practitioners.

• IRC Families Make the Difference (FMD) curriculum for parents and caregivers.

Expected results: ECD practitioners better able to observe and engage on parental practices and give advice on nurturing care; Parent community leaders able to facilitate parenting groups and share evidence-based information

To Create local Parenting Support Networks

• Trained 18 parents on the FMD curriculum to become FMD parenting groups and playgroups facilitators

• Created a playgroup guide to set up and run local play groups, including a toolbox with activity ideas

• Launched two types of parenting groups aimed at creating a support network and improving ECD knowledge for parents facing the same issues.

To Create an Online Parenting Support Network

• Launched a P+ flagship website and App

• Created social media pages:

  • Facebook

  • Instagram

  • YouTube

• Designed innovative and fun content to engage parents (videos, illustrations)

To Raise Awareness on Best Parenting Practices at the National and Local Level

• Identified communication champions at the local level and trained them in C4D concepts for them to develop their own communication plan at the local level

• Created various innovative content for:

• TV: Reality TV show promoting P+ key messages

• Radio

• Press

Monitoring & Evaluation

• External evaluation conducted by One to One Consulting (baseline and endline)

• Creation of monitoring tools and mechanisms for each adapted training package and related activities

• Documentation of lessons learned during the pilot phase for each main component

• Recommendations for scale up based on data, lessons learned and experience

• Action Plan for Programme scale up at the national level

Anticipated Challenges

• Governance: clarification of governance mechanisms between the local, regional and national level for service delivery and monitoring.

• Incorporating adapted training curricula into professional pre-service training in collaboration with universities.

• Availability of necessary resources (human and financial) to scale up.