The Government of Malawi recognizes that investment in early childhood development (ECD) is a cost-effective strategy to meet its development objectives in areas of health, nutrition, education, and social protection. In Malawi, ECD is delivered through an extensive network of community initiated and owned centers for the most vulnerable children under the age of six, known as Community-based Childcare Centers (CCBCs). The recent global food, fuel, and financial crises hit Malawi hard. Constrained government budgets and activities for ECD have jeopardized the service delivery of the existing ECD centers which cover about a third of all 3-6 year old children. From 2010 to 2012, the Protecting Early Childhood Development Project (PECD) aimed to mitigate the negative effects of the recent global crises on young children and to start building foundations against future crises. A rigorous impact evaluation of the PECD project in Malawi has been designed to test interactions between existing approaches to improve quality in the preschool sector to maximize effects for primary school readiness. The impact evaluation will test the effectiveness of different approaches to improve quality of ECD Centers, parenting knowledge and practices, and child development and school readiness. The evaluation follows a cluster-randomized control trial design in which 199 CBCCs in four of Malawi’s 28 districts were randomized after baseline into one of three treatment arms or to a control arm. This Impact Evaluation (IE) has three primary research objectives, which are both academically important and pertinent for policy makers in low-income countries: (1) To evaluate the effect of intensive training and mentoring of teachers andcaregivers at CBCCs in rural sub-Saharan Africa on young children’s physical, emotional, and cognitive development; (2) To determine how can cash incentives be used to retain teachers and caregivers and make them more effective; (3) To assess whether parenting education can be an effective substitute or complement to the efforts to improve preschool quality with respect to child development outcomes. The baseline survey was conducted between September 30, 2011 and February 17, 2012. Follow-up data was collected between May 13, 2013 and October, 2013. The endline survey is proposed for May June 2014. Data collection at baseline involved the administration of the mother/guardian and CBCC questionnaires, enumerator observations at the CBCC, and measurement of child development and anthropometric status.
