Introduction
Globally more than 250 million children are not meeting their developmental potential due to a myriad of factors including lack of stimulation, poor health, and nutrition, exposure to violence in their homes, and humanitarian crisis (In Rwanda, the nutrition and development status of a child has been improving over the last 6 years but more still needs to be done. When the First Steps Intera za Mbere program started in 2014, the stunting rate in Rwanda was at 38% and this has now reduced to 33% as per the 2020 Rwanda Demographic and Health Survey (RDHS). But, young children in Rwanda are still faced with many challenges including limited stimulation and early learning support at home. In the RDHS 76% of children aged 24 to 59 months were found to be developmentally on track in at least 3 of 4 core domains of child development although only 12% were found to be on track in literacy and mathematics, which are foundation skills for later learning. Children living in urban areas and children from wealthier households were found to be more likely to be on track implying issues around equity. In terms of access to play and learning materials, only 2% of children under 5 were found to have 3 or more picture books at home, and only 36% of children aged 0–59 months had engaged with an adult household member in four or more activities that promote learning and school readiness 3 days prior to the survey (In response to these challenges, in 2014, The First Steps “Intera za Mbere” (FS) project was innovated, designed, and implemented in the western province district of Ngororero. In 2018 it was scaled up to 3 more districts, Kirehe, Gasabo, and Ruhango. The project aimed at offering a nationally scalable and holistic approach to parenting education that was integrated within the Rwandan government structures, combining radio programming with community-based peer learning groups, and collaborating with local publishers and entrepreneurs to increase parents’ access to emergent literacy materials. The project also had an ambitious policy and advocacy agenda to ensure that the enabling environment for nurturing care was improved and sustained through favorable policy actions. The ambitions for scale and sustainability required merging learning and implementation science approaches to capture what works or does not work, how it works and other factors necessary for innovation uptake as proposed by Danika (