Designing a Practical Monitoring, Evaluation, and Knowledge Management Framework for Community-Based Early Childhood Education in Crisis-Affected Cameroon

Abstract

Community-based providers in crisis-affected settings increasingly deliver early childhood education (ECE), yet most available monitoring guidance is designed either for population-level Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) reporting or for technically demanding child-development assessment, leaving small organizations without a feasible routine system. This paper addresses that gap through a framework-development (design) study. Using Goodness and Mercy Missions' assignment in Boyo Division, Cameroon, as an illustrative case, it synthesizes SDG 4.2 metadata, the Nurturing Care Framework, INEE Minimum Standards, established early-learning measurement tools (ECDI2030, IDELA, and MELQO), OECD DAC evaluation criteria, and Cameroon crisis evidence into a practical monitoring, evaluation, and knowledge management (M&E/KM) framework. The synthesis follows a transparent, criteria-based procedure for selecting sources and deriving the design. The contribution is an explicitly minimum-viable system: a theory of change with stated assumptions and risks, an SDG-aligned indicator matrix mapped to DAC criteria, low-burden data-collection tools (paper-based, with an optional offline mobile-data-collection pathway), a data-responsibility and child-safeguarding protocol, reporting and learning products, and a staged validation roadmap. Because no primary field data were collected, the framework is not a measure of programme impact and its feasibility claims are propositions to be tested rather than demonstrated results; the paper sets out how a small provider can pilot, refine, and later evaluate the system. The framework is designed to be transferable to comparable low-capacity, crisis-affected ECE providers.