Work with us
Five ways in
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For: ISSA members and partner organisations who want to run Primokiz in their country.
Become a licensed implementer
The Jacobs Foundation awarded ISSA the licence to use Primokiz across countries. ISSA sub-licenses it to Members and partners after a structured know-how transfer process — because the method depends on people who understand it deeply, not on a document.
What the know-how transfer looks like. In February 2023, ISSA convened a five-day workshop in Bucharest: a two-day introduction to the approach and a three-day know-how transfer for sub-licensing. Four ISSA members were trained — from Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Ukraine. Seven members took part in total, alongside UNICEF’s Regional Office, UNICEF Moldova and the Bernard van Leer Foundation. The Romanian and Slovenian teams served as resource experts and coaches, which is how we prefer to do it: the people who have just done it teaching the people about to do it.
What a licence gives you. The right to use Primokiz in your country. The full handbook and resource package. Coaching from ISSA and from peers who have implemented. Access to the network of implementers across countries.
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For: anyone who wants to understand the approach before committing to it.
Join a workshop
We run introductory workshops on the Primokiz approach — the rationale, the concept, the phases, the tools, the results and the lessons learned — usually over two days, and usually with practitioners from countries that have already implemented in the room.
They are a good way to work out whether this is right for you. Several countries in the current cohort decided to proceed after attending one.
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For: foundations, bilateral and multilateral funders, and national governments.
Fund this work
Primokiz has been supported by the Jacobs Foundation, UNICEF and other partners.
We have learned something about how this work gets funded, and we would rather share it than pretend otherwise. ISSA’s original assumption was that municipalities would buy Primokiz directly as a technical assistance package. That proved unrealistic — as our own internal report put it, “the ‘market’ might not be ready for it.” What worked instead was a service model promoted among funders: philanthropic or institutional funding that enables a national member organisation to work with a cohort of municipalities.
What funding buys. Facilitator and coordinator capacity. The situation analysis process. Convening and coaching. Small but decisive investments in services — the equipment, the space, the first year of a new programme — that make the strategy real enough for a municipality to keep funding it.
What it doesn’t buy. A quick result. The evaluations are consistent: plan for one and a half to two and a half years, and the durable outcome is local capacity rather than any single service.
Frequently asked
Does the municipality have to be a certain size?
No. This has been done in a village of 665 people and in a city district of 116,656. The method scales by adjusting how the local team works — small municipalities tend to involve every professional; larger ones form thematic/sector sub-groups.
How long does it take?
Plan for one and a half to two years for the full process, of which the situation analysis takes roughly four to twelve months, with the handbook estimating six, depending on previous capacities or experiences at the local level of working across sectors.
Do we need money for new services first?
Not until the strategy is developed. The costs relate mainly for the time of staff involved in the process in each phase of the process. Investment decisions come later, informed by evidence, why the strategies get approved.
What if we already have a strategy?
Good. The method explicitly builds on existing analyses rather than starting from zero, and several municipalities embedded their early childhood work into an existing local development strategy rather than writing a separate document.
Who actually does the work?
People at the local level setting up and sustaining structures of coordination led with vision informed by real data. The local coordinator’s leadership and constant commitment (time included), the cross-sectoral team who lead and write the situation analysis, led the development and the implementation of the strategy. The facilitator who supports the process, who is guided by the Primokiz licensed implementer.
What happens when the programme ends?
That depends on the quality of the process implemented and the outcomes of the process. Where the local team kept meeting driven by the relevance and impact of their work — sometimes formally, sometimes as an informal coffee every few months — the work continued. Where it has been perceived only as a time-bound project, it didn’t continue, and that can happen. In Slovenia, every municipality wrote continuation of the team into its strategy as a measure in its own right, understanding its urgency and relevance – thus legitimizing the role of a coordination body at the local level, and several Hungarian ones did the same — which we recommend to everyone.
Get in touch
Tell us a little about your organisation and what you have in mind. We reply within a few working days.
Enquiry sent
Thank you — your message has reached ISSA. We will be in touch soon.
Or write to us directly
Dr. Mihaela Ionescu, Ph.D.
Programme Director, ISSA
mionescu@issa.nlISSA — International Step by Step Association Hooglandse Kerkgracht 17R 2312 HS Leiden, The Netherlands