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Context
Context
The Playful Parenting Community of Practice (CoP), active from 2020-2024, consisted of partners implementing and researching playful parenting programs at scale in five countries: Bhutan, Guatemala, Rwanda, Serbia, and Zambia, with support from the LEGO Foundation. FHI 360 conducted implementation research on the programs and led the Playful Parenting CoP as an avenue to feed data back to programs.
The community was guided by the following objectives:
Enable cross-country learnings that are rooted in partner experience and research findings.
Foster a strong sense of community for support and problem-solving that facilitates peer- learning.
Link community members to the latest evidence and leading experts on scaling playful parenting programs to ground truth pathways to scale.
My role on the project was to manage and facilitate the community of practice, which involved the following…
Design and facilitate experiential online and in-person meetings
Build platforms for asynchronous communication and knowledge exchange
Maintain ongoing communication & coordination with community members between meetings
Conduct formative research on participation and adapt the community based on insights
Over the fiver years, the community evolved from interacting during the pandemic, to reaching maturity and meeting in person to transforming as the programs and research reached a close:
Strategy & Approach
Strategy & Approach
We aimed to practice what we preached in the playful parenting programs by infusing a spirit of play into this professional development space. Read about some of the core features of the Playful Parenting CoP below:
Facilitation Techniques
Facilitation Techniques
Experiential learning cycle
Playful pedagogies & energizers
Joint ownership
Deep dives of thematic priorities
Platforms & Tools
Platforms & Tools
Zoom for meetings
Teams/SharePoint for async communication & file management
Google Jamboard & Mentimeter for collaboration
Key Stats
Key Stats
Timeline: April 2020-December 2024
# of Participants: ~30 participants
Meetings: Virtual meetings ~every six weeks | 2 in-person meetings
Formative research in Year 3 of the community revealed a few opportunities to implement changes to the community to better meet our participants’ needs:
Build a repository of resources to facilitate knowledge exchange and async collaboration
Establish an interest log to facilitate organic connections between community members and create a content calendar driven by thematic priorities
Design meeting agendas to hone in specific thematic interests (e.g.: tracking participants) and do a "deep dive" of these themes
Conduct ongoing assessments
Prioritize external community building
Key Activities & Outputs
Key Activities & Outputs
28 Virtual and In-Person Meetings
3 Webinars, 3 Blogs, 8 Conference Presentations
Platforms for Asynch Communication: Teams Repository & ECD Connect
See below a few snapshots of key activities across the life of the CoP:
Nov 2022 - Serbia CoP Meeting
Nov 2022 - Serbia CoP Meeting
"The in-person COP was organized effectively. The methods used were unthreatening, fun, and greatly interactive."
~Community Member
Jan 2024 - Rwanda CoP Meeting
Jan 2024 - Rwanda CoP Meeting
“It was really rich Agenda, a lot of learning, opportunity to share, to go in in depth discussion and bilateral bonding.”
~Community Member
Playful Parenting Repository
Playful Parenting Repository
This repository was developed as a response to formative research on the CoP.
ECD Connect
ECD Connect
As the community began to wind down, we worked with the Early Childhood Development Action Network (ECDAN) to establish a Playful Parenting Community on their platform.
Session Manual
Session Manual
After the first in-person meeting, requests from community members to share sessions prompted me to develop a session manual.
Impact & Outcomes
Impact & Outcomes
The quotes below illustrate the impact of the CoP with respect to its three objectives:
- Cross-Country Learning
We…could exchange ideas, insights and shared best practices. It was also a networking opportunity for all of us. We got to expose [ourselves] to different perspectives and experiences fostering our own creativity and innovations. Continuous learning and reflections within the community has helped us improve our professional confidence and professional competencies. It also created a close network and making us feel like a family facing difficulties together and supporting each other by sharing experiences and finding solutions.”
(PP Close Out Survey)
2. Connectedness
2. Connectedness
As we participated more and more it created a strong sense of unity and trust, making us feel supported and valued. As we worked together to achieve common goals, it helped us deepen [the] bond, which made us feel more like a community where everyone is committed to helping each other grow, if not giving a listening ear.”
(PP Close Out Survey)
3. Evidence
3. Evidence
The feedback we received helped us recognize some key elements of promoting play, especially responding when a child has achieved mastery, or becomes bored with play activities to then add greater complexity, which was not a part of the original intervention approach.”
(PP Close Out Survey)
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