Program overview: "Research"

Research (participatory and clinical)

Program overview:

Mkombozi engages in three types of research to build an evidence-based practice:

clinical research for interventions to build child resilience;
tracking of trends in populations and dynamics of children who live / work on the streets;
participatory action research (PAR) with vulnerable children and communities.

Mkombozi's clinical research is being conducted in collaboration with the University of Zurich's Centre for Disaster and Military Psychiatry. This includes in-depth monitoring and evaluation of our interventions and service outcomes, in order to identify best practices and to improve our programmes. We believe that extensive evaluation will help Mkombozi to offer more effective services and will positively impact the development and improvement of local and national child education and protection services and policies.

With respect to "trend tracking", Mkombozi conducts a bi-annual census of children who live / work on the streets in Moshi and Arusha, utilising a small, in-house research team to conduct the study. Mkombozi's Census Reports are highly valued as critical exposes of Tanzania's homeless / street-involved child situation. In fact, Mkombozi has also recently proposed a longer-term tracking study to follow up on the life prospects of children who formerly lived / worked on the streets and have received Mkombozi's services.

Mkombozi uses Participatory Action Research (PAR) to inform and design its programs, and as such, to facilitate the direct involvement of communities in the understanding of child migration. In particular, Mkombozi researches, develops and strengthens community-based interventions that target the root causes of child and youth migration. Such community-based interventions enable communities themselves to support their vulnerable children and youth before they actually migrate to the streets.

Overall, Mkombozi's five-year research and evaluation programme will ascertain how to improve Mkombozi's psychosocial, educational, mentoring, sports and play programmes. A key aspect of our investigations will be to examine how our services may promote health through the strengthening the resilience processes of street and other vulnerable children. We believe these resilience processes are key in promoting psychosocial health and improve children's ability to benefit from education.

Current research team targets:

To explore a research partnership and seek funds for a retrospective tracking study of children we worked with 10 years ago.
To undertake a longitudinal study of children who lived / worked on the streets and were supported by Mkombozi, to assess their well being once they moved on from Mkombozi's services.
To conduct PAR on the local causation of school dropouts in Kilimanjaro region, and to document and disseminate results and recommendations to education stakeholders in Tanzania.
To conduct baseline research into the levels of resilience and protective factors employed by children who have faced extreme stress and vulnerability (children on the streets, at Mkombozi residential centre and children still at home) (i.e. collect baseline data on current resilience levels using Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) and HOPE scales).
To identify tests that most accurately measure resilience in children. Specifically, identify the level of each child's resilience at the beginning of the project, as measured by the use of specific resilience test questionnaires. Then, investigate whether children who participate in Mkombozi's sports and play programmes show increased resilience as demonstrated by improved coping and social behaviors and improved educational performance. Evidence would also include improved attendance in classes, improved grades, and completing and moving to higher class levels.
To strengthen Mkombozi's capacity to engage with the policy frameworks, thereby enabling Mkombozi to identify contradictions between policy and practice and to leverage policies in advocating for effective local planning processes that reflect the needs of vulnerable children.
To periodically train and upgrade the social research skills of the research team.
To measure trends in populations of children working / living on the streets (using census).
To measure mentee's resilience prior to matching, mid match and at close of match.
To conduct evaluative research with University of Zurich in targeted MEMKWA centres to measure the impact of our PYP curriculum and MEMKWA facilitator training.
To initiate and sustain a child tracking study.

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