The Sustainable Market Inclusive Livelihood Pathways to Self-Reliance (SMILES) Project conducted its second webinar series on Wednesday, August 20, 2025, with a focus on "the integration of parenting and early childhood development activities in improving child development and overall household wellbeing." The event highlighted the integration's key findings and lessons learnt.
Introduction of the SMILES Project
The at AVSI Foundation and moderator of the webinar, Dr. Rita Larok, provided a summary of the SMILES project, its integration of Graduation and Market Systems Development, its approach and components, and their contribution to improving livelihoods of extremely poor individuals.
“We work with extremely poor refugee and host community households in the multi-sectoral project. Our collaboration with these households lasts for a period of two cohorts, hence a 24-month implementation. The project components, such as savings, referrals, and coaching, linkages to services, business coaching, and asset transfer, begin with targeting participants and are accompanied by a market analysis and contextual assessments. Each component is layered on top of another, some of them extending beyond the programme period,”
Dr Rita Larok AVSI Graduation Focal Person
Integration of Parenting Sessions
Coaching Plus underscores the importance of adapting your intervention to respond to and address the challenges of communities being served. The SMILES project integrated parenting and early childhood development activities into its coaching guide to improve the programme’s impact on child development. spearheaded this session.
“Coaching is a platform that accompanies the extremely poor households to self-reliance. A trained coach supports and motivates participants to achieve these gains through engaging them in a number of activities that allow them to set short-term SMART goals and be able to achieve them through the available resources that they have within their means” explained Amony.
The integration of parenting generally improved knowledge, skills, and practices among participants. Positive improvements included improved relationships among households – amongst parents as well as their relations with their children
Dorothy Amony, SMILES project Graduation Advisor
Integration of Early Childhood Development
Another project graduation advisor, Lukia Nagadya, presented a session on the integration of early childhood development, which targets children aged three to five to enhance their physical, emotional, social, and cognitive well-being.
The community playgroup approach is a powerful and sustainable strategy implemented in improving child development because it is responsive to the local needs and is community-led
Lukia Nagadya, SMILES project Graduation Advisor
Qualitative Findings on the Contribution of Early Childhood Development Towards Child Development
Research findings revealed that integrating early childhood development activities (including parenting sessions and community playgroups) within the graduation model greatly contributed to improved child wellbeing outcomes across the four domains shared, namely cognitive competences, physical/motor development, socio-emotional skills and communication skills. Professor Eddy Walakira provided an overview of results regarding the integration.
Cognitively, children registered improvement in problem-solving skills such as counting and making toys independently. Physically, children acquired abilities to use their body parts to perform tasks such as running, throwing the ball, skipping and jumping. Socio-emotionally, there was improvement in socialisation skills such as sharing, making friends and maintaining cordial relationships. Children also learnt other languages beyond their mother tongue through interactive sessions with caregivers and other children
Professor Walakira.
“Overall, the Coaching Plus is suitable for addressing the unmet early childhood development needs within the graduation model in the resource-constrained humanitarian settings. More profoundly, it prepares children for formal primary education,” he concluded.
Conclusion
A poll on parenting styles was administered during the webinar, and participants asked questions about better parenting skills between men and women, and comparison insights between host and refugee communities, and the contrast between group and individual coaching, community playgroup modules and the contribution of the caregiver in improving the child’s wellbeing.
(Click HERE for links to the presentation, video and audio recording)