Children International Evaluation Partnership

Between 2020 and 2022, Children International (CI) tested the Community Independence Initiative (CII), a global family-centered peer driven change model, with 400 families in Colombia, The Philippines, and Mexico. The CII invests in the talents, strengths, and ingenuity of people living in low-resource communities, providing a structure within which families set their own goals and strengthen social networks that support their progress. From this experiment, CI learned that intervening with caregivers and empowering them leads to improvements in child well-being. Through a new partnership between the Field Center and Children International, a robust evaluation of the longer-term results of CII will help incorporate elements from this approach into CI’s change model, transform the way organizations think about family engagement, and allow for the sharing of learning and results across CI and globally.