Catalyzing REAL Fathers across Uganda for Early Learning and Play

Background
Witnessing and experiencing violence impedes children’s healthy development and learning. Responsible, Engaged and Loving Fathers (REAL Fathers) is an evidence-based mentoring program for young fathers and their partners to reduce intimate partner violence (IPV), violence against children and enhance early childhood development. Developed by community members in northern Uganda, the project was piloted and proven effective in two regions in Uganda in reducing violence in families with children under the age of 3 years via mentorship on positive parenting, non-violent discipline, and gender equity and respectful couple communication. By reinforcing positive fatherhood norms, REAL Fathers contributes towards laying strong foundations for early childhood development and ending intergenerational cycles of violence.

In January 2022, the Government of Uganda endorsed REAL Fathers as an implementation strategy in support of its third National Development Plan (NDP III 2021-2025) and related early childhood development policies and frameworks. With this endorsement and government buy-in the REAL Fathers Consortium sought and was awarded a large Global Grand Challenge grant from the LEGO Foundation (2022-2027). Consortium partners include Uganda-based experts in management and learning (IIDC), program implementation (Bantwana, All Nations, Somero, and the Forum for African Women Educationalists), and research (NaNa Development), with technical assistance from UCSD-GEH.

What We’re Doing
The Consortium is comprised of In close coordination, the consortium members are working to: 1) scale the REAL Fathers program to six new regions across Uganda; 2) conduct rigorous evaluation of the expanded implementation; and 3) identify strategies for institutionalizing program efforts into early childhood development centers and ministry workplans and budgets.

GEH is leading the development of learning and research design to monitor and evaluate the implementation and scale-up of REAL Fathers. Key activities led by GEH include:

• Outcome evaluation: stepped-wedge cluster-randomized controlled trial design within 72 sub-counties randomly sampled from 24 districts in six regions of Uganda
• Norms assessment: Qualitative community-based work combined with development of novel norms survey measures
• Adaptive management: Most Significant Change qualitative approaches plus data utilization workshops drawing on real-time monitoring data
• Scale-up: Designing with the end in mind via an advisory board comprised of ministry stakeholders