Project Lead(s): Aggrey Omondi
In an unprecedented effort, Kenya’s Ugunja Community Resource Center will empower community health workers in Western Kenya with field-tested, mobile phone software to individualize early child development care in the family home and monitor progress via the Internet.
Calling it “the world's first mobile phone-based early childhood development software platform for low-resource settings,” project leader Aggey Omondi says the software suite will include "apps" for community health workers, for parents and for caregivers, offering practical advice, tools, educational aids and forms for assessing, fostering early childhood development, including cognitive development, nutritional support, management of common illnesses, and counseling on cognitive stimulation for parents and caregivers.
Equipped with mobile phones carrying the software, 30 community health workers will serve 1500 households with at least one child under age 3, and 10 parents will receive mobile phones containing the relevant application.
The online monitoring program features a "dashboard" to help users visualize key process and performance indicators, as well as outcome metrics and an analytics suite to enable program managers to analyze trends.
Project collaborators include the Harvard Business School and Dimagi Inc. of Cambridge MA, the University of Pennsylvania and the Kenya Methodist University School of Medicine and Health.