M&E support for Parent plus & Urban 95 program in India
Narrative description of Project:
The Bernard van Leer Foundation (BvLF) is an international foundation based in The Hague. Since its inception in 1949, the Foundation has worked in more than 50 countries and invested toward our mission: to improve opportunities for young children (0-5 years) growing up with social and economic disadvantage. BvLF is working in a number of core countries where it engages in strategic investments to advance its mission for young children and has supported programmes in India since 1992. Urban95 is the Bernard van Leer Foundation’s initiative to work with urban planners, architects, engineers, and city managers to incorporate a focus on early childhood development into the planning and management of cities. Urban95 encourages the planning and design of cities from a children's perspective—from 95 centimeters, the average height of a healthy 3-year old. Urban95’s goal is to support healthier, safer, and more exciting urban neighborhoods for young children, for those who care for them, and for everyone. Parents+ is the Bernard van Leer Foundation’s initiative that combines early years-focused coaching activities for parents and other caregivers – using insights from behavioural science to improve impact – with at least one other service designed to meet a child’s and/or her parents’ basic needs. This joint provision could occur within government-led services, or in conjunction with civil society partners. We advocate for this combination because we believe that the bundling of services is a cost-effective way to achieve impact at scale in the early years.
policymakers, civil society and other stakeholders to build structures that support all babies, toddlers and caregivers, together with key programmes directed at specific vulnerable populations.
Description of actual services provided by your staff within the assignment:
DevInsights provided advisory services on Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) to the Bernard van Leer Foundation for two years, focusing on the Urban95 and Parents+ programs. These programs encompassed ten projects across India. DevInsights conducted various training and capacity-building workshops with ten technical partners. These workshops aimed to develop customized MEL plans and frameworks for specific projects. They covered topics such as data collection techniques, ensuring data quality, visualization methods, dissemination of findings and learnings, and reporting. Additionally, DevInsights facilitated peer learning sessions and designed training modules to enhance functional skill sets.
Furthermore, a series of workshops were organized on topics including Logic Models, Theory of Change, Results Frameworks, and Log Frames. Co-creation of project and program-level indicators for result measurement also took place. DevInsights provided support in conducting evaluation studies, data maintenance and management, continuous monitoring using Management Information Systems (MIS), and documenting key learnings. These efforts spanned sub-national and national levels, ensuring comprehensive coverage and impactful insights. DevInsights also reviewed and provided feedback on data collection tools and other project-related documents of the partners. The data collected through MIS sheets from different partners were compiled into a program-level document for the donor, outlining the overall impact of the program across the ten different projects. DI has also evaluated two urban95 projects to know the challenges and learnings of the project.
