Cuando las personas desplazadas dirigen la investigación: la experiencia de África Oriental

Cuatro investigadores desplazados que lideraron un estudio sobre las organizaciones dirigidas por refugiados en África Oriental hablan de las ventajas y los retos asociados de ser un investigador “interno”

Multilingual assessment of early child development: Analyses from repeated observations of children in Kenya.

In many low- and middle-income countries, young children learn a mother tongue or indigenous language at home before entering the formal education system where they will need to understand and speak a countrys official language(s). Thus, assessments of children before school age, conducted in a nations official language, may not fully reflect a childs development, underscoring the importance of test translation and adaptation. To examine differences in vocabulary development by language of assessment, we adapted and validated instruments to measure developmental outcomes, including expressive and receptive vocabulary. We assessed 505 2-to-6-year-old children in rural communities in Western Kenya with comparable vocabulary tests in three languages: Luo (the local language or mother tongue), Swahili, and English (official languages) at two time points, 5-6 weeks apart, between September 2015 and October 2016. Younger children responded to the expressive vocabulary measure exclusively in Luo (44%-59% of 2-to-4-year-olds) much more frequently than did older children (20%-21% of 5-to-6-year-olds). Baseline receptive vocabulary scores in Luo (β = 0.26, SE = 0.05, p < 0.001) and Swahili (β = 0.10, SE = 0.05, p = 0.032) were strongly associated with receptive vocabulary in English at follow-up, even after controlling for English vocabulary at baseline. Parental Luo literacy at baseline (β = 0.11, SE = 0.05, p = 0.045) was associated with child English vocabulary at follow-up, while parental English literacy at baseline was not. Our findings suggest that multilingual testing is essential to understanding the developmental environment and cognitive growth of multilingual children

Healthcare Services for the Physically Challenged Persons in Africa: Challenges and Way Forward

This chapter is based on persons with physical disabilities in Africa, their challenges, and how it affects their health-seeking behaviors. We noticed that physical challenge has a substantial long-term adverse effect on one’s ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities. Both the causes and the consequences of physical disability vary throughout the world, especially in Africa. Environmental, technical, and attitudinal barriers and consequent social exclusion reduce the opportunities for physically challenged persons to contribute productively to the household and the community and further increase the risk of falling into poverty and poor healthcare services. The inability of the physically challenged persons to perceive the lack of points of interest of government has intensified to make significant recommendations and possible solutions. This is appalling because the rate to which a community provides and funds restoration is a way of grading how much interest it has, and importance it connects to the quality of life of its citizens. We advocate and recommend swift actions and disability inclusiveness to accommodate persons with physical disabilities in Africa for them to have a good perception of life

Successful transition to secondary school in Tanzania: What are the barriers?

Transition to secondary school is a problem internationally. Tanzanian students face an additional challenge as the medium of instruction changes from Kiswahili to English. An 18-item questionnaire (N = 383) and focus groups (primary standard 7, secondary forms 1 and 3, and primary and secondary teachers) were used in this study. Most students started secondary school with high expectations. These were qualified by experiences of bullying and punishment. Teachers recognised students losing hope as an explanation for truancy. However, they lacked both the training to teach English and knowledge of alternatives to punishment. Peer mentoring potentially addresses these challenges during transition

Building Meaningful Refugee Participation into Protection Policymaking

Around the world, many refugees find themselves in situations of protracted displacement. As states and international actors search for more effective ways to address protection and displacement challenges, one promising—but often underutilized—approach is to meaningfully involve refugees in crafting and implementing policy responses.Engaging affected communities in protection policymaking can take a variety of forms, including one-off consultations, individual refugee advisors or advisory boards, and refugees being appointed as senior leaders or hired as staff within organizations. Such approaches hold the potential to foster policies that better reflect the needs and priorities of refugee communities and, in doing so, improve protection outcomes. But care must be taken to go beyond tokenistic and inconsistent engagement, and more evidence is needed to understand which approaches are most impactful and under what circumstances