Report
In 2023, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) implemented a 7-month early childhood development (ECD) program for the Play to Learn (PTL) initiative with Sesame Workshop. PTL’s Gindegi Goron delivered remote and in-person health, nutrition, and ECD support for caregivers of 0-2 year old children in Cox’s Bazar’s Rohingya and host community. From May to December 2023, Gindegi Goron reached 1,268 children and their mothers.
International Centre for Diarrheal Disease Research (ICDDR,B) led an impact evaluation of the Gindegi Goron program in collaboration with the IRC and Sesame Workshop research teams. The evaluation included a cost - effectiveness analysis conducted by the IRC's Best Use of Resources team, analyzing the cost-effectiveness difference of two treatment arms: (1)“Remote” treatment, which includes the provision of interactive voice recording (IVR) messages, ECD kits, and live facilitator calls, and (2) “Hybrid” treatment, which includes the addition of in-person home visits to the base Remote treatment.
The cost to implement Remote is $98 per child, while the cost to implement Hybrid is $203 per child. The largest cost difference between Remote and Hybrid results from the treatment arms’ spending on National Staff, with Hybrid requiring 15% more staff time than Remote.
Impact evaluation researchers found that, compared to Remote, Hybrid had no significant marginal impact on the program’s primary outcome of interest, early child development, or on home stimulation. Combined with costing more than twice as much as Remote per child, the addition of home visits to the Remote treatment cannot be considered cost-effective and should not be implemented as they were tested in this model. Remote appears to be a cost-effective treatment which yields the same moderately positive impact on early child development as Hybrid. Remote showed a 0.22 increase in standard deviations for ECD outcomes while demonstrating comparatively high-cost efficiency to other IRC- implemented ECD interventions and potential returns to scale.
