Internet of Good Things For Early Learning in Eastern and Southern Africa
Children’s early experiences shape how their brains develop, and early learning sets the stage for school success.Providing knowledge, guidelines, and tips on early learning to parents, families, caregivers and healthcare providers equips them with practical tips and activities that they can put into practice at the point of care, foster an…, Reaching the end user. , In a large number of communities in Eastern and Southern Africa, it was observed that limited interpersonal communication skills amongst health workers have led to poor communication of important early learning and CCD intervention information to families. There also seems to be a gap in getting this early learning information to the “end-user” –…, A closer look., The Internet of Good Things (IoGT) aims to connect the most marginalized communities to essential information, completely for free . This also addresses a key insight (seen below) – according to the GSMA Intelligence Consumer Index, the affordability barrier is the second most reported barrier to getting online in South Africa. To further…, How does it work?, Thanks to the partnership with Free Basics by Facebook, early learning messages and care practices embedded on the Internet of Good Things are accessible for free across all of South Africa through the Cell-C mobile network. This means that accessing IoGT will not deduct credit from users’ phones. To reach a larger population, and disseminate…, How Communities in South Africa Responded, Internet of Good Things was also used to capture evidence of the benefits of on-demand access to quality early learning information in South Africa. Thanks to its ubiquitous nature, the mobile phone can be used to capture feedback from users, engage and learn from the communities. We have gathered the results on the effectiveness of the Care for…, What next?, With results gathered from the South African pilot, UNICEF has decided to scale and widen the availability of the Early Learning material to other countries in the region. In Eastern and Southern Africa, there is now localized version of the “Early Life Tips content” available in numerous countries on the Internet of Good Things mobile platform:…