Parents’ sensitive response is crucial to secure parent-children attachment and related overall consequences. When children are at risk for poor language and cognitive development, home must be the best place for stimulation and learning for children. Although there is a growing recognition that children need support for physical growth and psycho-social, emotional and cognitive development in Bangladesh, we have parenting education in limited areas and those programme components are not updated in culture specific ways. Appraisingly, ICDP project of CHTDB in collaboration with UNICEF has modified to strengthening its current parenting education component for indigenous population at the hills, the modification process would be key lesson learnt for parenting education programme for indigenous populations at the plain. Modification of parenting education comprised of three steps. First, review included a desk review of parenting education programme of ICDP including others and empirical investigation of ICDP parenting education component. Second, based on the review, we updated mainly three subcomponents: i) Para Worker’s Guidebook -1 for ECD part, ii) Courtyard Meeting Manual for ECD part, iii) and IEC materials, especially Flip-Chart on parenting education. Finally, courtyard meeting manual was modified by including local folk tales and myth relevant to parenting education. Third, all the updated materials were validated in different relevant stakeholders, namely parents, Para workers, ICDP staffs, and policy personnel. Thus, a policy note for parenting education of indigenous population at the plain would be to adopt a culture specific comprehensive package of parenting education.

1. Building a Culture of Early Literacy into Parenting
Practices for Indigenous People: A Process
Documentation in ICDP of CHTDB
Dr. Happy Das
Md. Shahriar Shafiq
Md. Kamal Pasa
22 January 2016
1

2. Care and stimulation of children 0 to 8 years is important for
improving their quality of life and survival.
It is a critical stage as rapid growth in the brain during these
early years may dissipate if unused.
Parenting education program addresses to mothers for
fostering child growth and development.
Some 48% of children under 5 years are moderately or
severely malnourished that is strongly associated with lower
cognitive and language development.
Background2

3. Illiterate parents are often uninformed about the need for
stimulating experiences to enhance development.
Article 27 of CRC states that State Parties shall take
appropriate measures to assist parents and others
responsible for the child to fulfill the right to an standard of
living adequate for his/her physical, mental, spiritual, moral
and social development.
Care and stimulation of children 0 to 8 years is important for
improving their quality of life and survival.
It is a critical stage as rapid growth in the brain during these
early years may dissipate if unused.
Background (cont…)3

4. Parenting education program addresses to mothers for
fostering child growth and development.
In Bangladesh, there have parenting education in limited
areas and those programme components are not updated
in culture specific ways.
ICDP project of CHTDB in collaboration with UNICEF is
providing interventions to the project beneficiaries from a
range of services in the areas of health, nutrition, hygiene,
education, protection and communication for
development.
4 Background (cont…)

5. The education interventions include early learning and pre-
primary education for 3-5 years and parenting education
targeting 0-5 years.
Para Worker deliver parenting education session to make
parents aware of developmental needs of children and
allow them to support children’s development.
The program was designed with 12 sessions for one year
mainly on early childhood development supported by
other sessions on parenting motivation, children rights,
nutrition, health and hygiene issues.
5 Background (cont…)

6. Modification Process
Modified to strengthening its current parenting education
component for indigenous population at the hills.
Modification comprised of three steps –
1) review of parenting education program
2) update of Parenting Education components
3) validation of updated materials
6

7. Modification Process (cont…)
Step 1: Review of parenting education program
Review was done in three phases
First phase:
Collection and review of a number of materials related to
parenting with especially considering the context of
Bangladesh.
Pointing out the key facts including strengths and
weaknesses of the parenting program of other providers to
get help for developing a strong and effective parenting
education component considering the real factors of
implementation areas.
7

8. Second Phase:
Visited the program areas in order to investigate the
current practices as well as to understand the challenges of
the program.
Conducted Focus Group Discussion (FGD), Key Informants
Interview (KII) and Observation with the key stakeholders.
A qualitative study protocol was developed to collect data.
8 Modification Process (cont…)

9. Third Phase:
Interview of the selected respondents through telephone in
order to be clarified on some of the specific issues using
separate structured questionnaire.
The issues for telephonic discussion were drawn based on
the initial findings of the visit.
Thus, empirical study identified challenges, limitation, training
need gap of key field staff, and expectation of target
population with their programmatic and social basis, and also
shows pathways of cultural appropriate ways of programme
intervention.
9 Modification Process (cont…)

10. 10
Second step: update of Parenting Education components
 Development of the guidance notes on parenting education
of ECD part within Para Worker’s Handbook 1.
 The preliminary findings indicate that, the current sessions are
not enough user friendly, not well articulated and not in line
with the local context.
 Rewrite of the previous sessions to make that more user
friendly for the para workers.
Modification Process (cont…)

11. 11
Second step: update of Parenting Education components
 Added the areas of child development that are missing in the
current ECD part of the ICDP Para Worker Handbook to
integrate the theme of building a culture of early literacy in the
home.
 The raeas added are-
 Child’s Language Development and Mother Tongue;
 Children’s Engagement in Family Activities;
 Story Telling;
 Discuss on Para Centre’s Experience with children;
 Children with Special Needs
 Accidents and First Aid for your Children
 Preparation for Schooling
Modification Process (cont…)

12. 12
Second step: update of Parenting Education components
 Moreover, it added revise and rewrite of some additional
things for courtyard meeting-
 Complete Session plans with Facilitators’ Notes for
Para Workers, ECD part’
 Inclusion of local folk and tales in each session to
make it culturally sensitive,
 Supporting IEC Materials: A Flip Chart for the
Courtyard Meeting (New One),
 Session plans with Handouts for the Master Trainers,
ECD part.
Modification Process (cont…)

13. 13
Third step: Validation of updated materials
 Try-Out Workshop for Finalizing the Developed Guidance
Notes and IEC Materials on Parenting Education.
 Involve different stakeholders across the district, upazila
and para center level staff of ICDP including parents, Para
Worker (PW) and Senior Para Worker (SPW) in try out
workshop.
 Made tryout in the field, FGD with ICDP staffs and
demonstrated within the workshop participants.
 Finalization of the guideline and materials according to try-
out findings.
Modification Process (cont…)

14. 14
A commitment to using parenting education as a mainstream
delivery mode
There need to look at the current parenting education (PE)
component from a holistic perspective i.e. to look at
comprehensive parenting package including vertical and
horizontal articulation of health, nutrition, stimulation,
protection and behavioral communication issues;
Should take initiative for the capacity development of the Para
Workers through in-service training opportunities Arranging
Cluster Meeting focusing on academic discussion.
Arranging Cluster Meeting focusing on academic discussion.
Recommendations

15. 15
Adapt effective strategies to ensure the participation of fathers,
mother-in-laws and other family members so that the
disseminated messages are actually practiced at the home
background.
Should produce separate parenting education manuals for the
target groups like other nationally available programs.
Should take initiatives to use and develop teaching-learning
materials that are locally available for the sessions.
It is suggested to make a simple monitoring tool/ strategies
instead of sporadic monitoring by which the practice at home
level can be assessed easily.
Recommendations

16. 16
Thank You