UWSC Project Director Nathan Jones travels to Africa to work on an early childhood assessment project in refugee camps

UWSC Senior Project Director Nathan Jones recently traveled to a Darfuri refugee camp in eastern Chad to conduct an early childhood assessment for a new preschool program. A non-governmental organization (NGO) called Little Ripples hired UWSC to evaluate the impact of the innovative peace-building curriculum on physical and emotional health, cognitive development, and other aspects of the students’ lives. In June, Dr. Jones worked with the UN High Commission on Refugees and local Chadian NGOs to train 15 refugee interviewers and conduct surveys with 100 students and their primary caregivers. The project will check in with Little Ripples students several times during the pilot phase of the new preschool and provide data to a team of experts involved in evaluating and improving the program that will eventually reach 8,000 children in the Goz Amer and Djabal refugee camps.