For children under the age of 18 in Bangladesh, road traffic injuries, drowning, animal bites, poisonous substances, falls, burns, and electrocutions and fire-related burns pose significant and serious risk and are a leading cause of mortality, especially in rural areas. Despite this, there is limited evidence of what works to increase children’s knowledge of injury prevention and decrease incidents of unintentional injury.

In 2016, with funding and expertise from the AO Foundation and the AO Alliance Foundation, Sesame Workshop created Play Safe with Sisimpur, aimed at reducing the incidence of targeted preventable traumatic injuries among children ages 3-8 by improving children’s knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors related to safe play and injury prevention strategies. Leveraging the popularity of Sisimpur, the Bangladeshi co-production of Sesame Street, Play Safe with Sisimpur employed a school-based child-to-child and adult-to-adult mentorship model, designed to improve injury prevention knowledge and promote behavior change.

To evaluate the effectiveness of Play Safe with Sisimpur in improving injury prevention knowledge and promoting behavior change of children and their families in identifying dangerous situations, Sesame Workshop commissioned D3 to conduct a mixed-methods impact evaluation of the project. Sesame Workshop selected D3 from a competitive RFP process to lead the evaluation based on our proposed design, experience leading evaluation projects globally with a diversity of partners, and experience leading evaluations in South Asia specifically, including evaluations of both health and education interventions.

The mixed-methods evaluation design included quantitative knowledge surveys, and results were further investigated by in-depth interviews, ethnographies, and focus-group discussions. D3 further conducted the baseline evaluation in August 2017, before the program was launched. The program ended in December of 2017, and D3 completed the end line evaluation in January 2018.

To learn more about the exciting results of this evaluation and D3’s additional contributions to the survey design, sampling, and evaluation analysis, or to learn more about how D3 can assist with your project evaluation, please contact us at info@d3systems.com.

You can watch some of this innovative programing on Sesame’s YouTube channel, including English subtitles, or on Sisimpur’s YouTube channel directly.

If you are interested in thematic safety videos, you can access examples by following the links below:

• Playing safe
• Animal bites
• Road safety
• Water safety
• Informing elders about safety