Due to limited local access, less than half the children aged 3–6 in Burkina Faso receive the preschool education that would prepare them for primary school. Communities need relevant, quality kindergarten programs to provide early learning opportunities for their children.
The Project to Improve Access and Quality of Education (PAAQE) IAI for Preschool supports early childhood development by building the capacity of the government of Burkina Faso to offer high-quality early learning. This work includes the development and production of interactive audio instruction (IAI) lessons for preschool programs as well as professional development for early childhood staff.
EDC staff working on PAAQE are engaged in the following activities:
- Developing a one-year IAI series for early childhood education (ECE) in two languages (Moore and Gourmenchema)
- Developing a certification for early childhood staff
- Training government program officers to produce and evaluate pilot programs
- Developing an audio studio
- Creating a monitoring and evaluation plan for implementation
- Orienting community members to new ECE programming
- PAAQE aims to reach 15,000 children and 600 facilitators in 345 communities by the end of the project. It also aims to train 60 program officers.
Government of Burkina Faso