Across five countries, Kenya, Ghana, Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia, the Strengthening the Capacity of Women Religious in Early Childhood Development (SCORE) initiative (funded by Conrad N. Hilton Foundation from 2025-2028) is demonstrating what it looks like to create lasting change at scale by bringing together community leadership, government systems strengthening, and direct service delivery. In many of the communities where SCORE works, faith groups are seen as critical social service providers. Catholic Sisters are often the first point of contact for families in crisis, positioning them as trusted, locally rooted leaders who live and work alongside the communities they serve and bridge the gap between government systems and people’s everyday lives.
Through these relationships, SCORE connects vulnerable families to essential social services while strengthening the broader systems that support child development, health, and well-being. As a result, what starts at the community level can influence care reform policy and extend far beyond individual families and programs to sub-national and national policy. This creates a reinforcing loop in which community-level experts, including sisters, inform and improve policy, and stronger policy in turn enhances service delivery.
By embedding services within communities and aligning them with social systems, SCORE is helping build a more responsive and inclusive ecosystem of care for all. Caregivers of children with disabilities are at the center of Sister-led early childhood development programs, where families of children aged 0–5 are gaining access to nurturing care that supports healthy development and helps prevent long-term delays. Through these programs, families are not only reached but are connected to stronger referral systems that link them to essential health, social, mental health, and protection services, contributing to equitable scale by ensuring the most vulnerable children and caregivers are systematically included and supported.
A defining feature of the initiative is its investment in people. Through a “Sisters Supporting Sisters” model, the training equips each trainer to support families and young children with a holistic set of skills. It includes core content on healthcare, nutrition, social protection, early learning, and responsive caregiving, alongside maternal and child health through mother/father infant courses. In 2025, 174 Master Trainers are training more than 1,700 Sisters across the region, creating a self-sustaining network that is focused on child development, health, and well-being. In total (in 2025), 7,055 caregivers have been trained through the Sister-led platforms. This approach has created an expanding platform that delivers substantial impact at a significantly lower cost than traditional, externally funded models of scale. At the same time, Sister-led organizations are becoming stronger institutions, with improved governance, financial systems, safeguarding, and donor compliance. Many are now mobilizing significant resources and diversifying their funding, positioning themselves as credible, long-term partners.
Finally, to close the loop in care and strengthen the overall ecosystem, Sisters are playing a growing role in national policy discussions, where government officials who recognize their influence and expertise have reached out to them to shape more inclusive, community-centered approaches.
While the work takes place in complex environments, where stigma, weak coordination systems, and access barriers remain, SCORE shows that it is possible to achieve meaningful results by investing in trusted local leadership and by building diverse stakeholder networks. By empowering Sisters, strengthening institutions, and connecting communities to government systems, CRS demonstrates that it is possible to achieve lasting change with fewer resources by investing in what endures: trust, local leadership, and strong networks to catalyze long-term sustainable impact at scale.
