Growing Futures
Growing Futures is the next phase of J-PAL LAC and Universidad del Valle de Guatemala (UVG)’s collaboration to generate and use evidence with government, civil society, and academia in Guatemala.
Building on our previous work, the project works with partners to incubate innovations, test them rigorously, and translate findings into policy decisions and eventual scale-up efforts. It focuses on improving early childhood development (ECD) while linking it with social protection, health, education, and efforts to improve family livelihoods, including generating evidence on how to improve service delivery so that programs effectively reach intended populations.
J-PAL LAC Video | Improving Lives in LAC: The Construyendo Futuros Initiative (Guatemala)
Our approach
Growing Futures brings together evidence generation, capacity building, and strategic partnerships. We do this through four mutually reinforcing pillars:
Promote innovation and strengthen capacities. Incubate high-potential ideas and support local government and practitioners through targeted technical assistance and training.
Evaluate and scale effective solutions. Run competitive calls and support impact evaluations to identify what works and inform scale-up efforts.
Strengthen partnerships and data systems. Work with government, civil society, and academia to improve data quality and availability, support better decision-making, and institutionalize evidence use.
Disseminate and adapt evidence. Synthesize findings and support the adaptation of research insights to new contexts so practitioners and policymakers can act on evidence.
Together, these pillars create a virtuous cycle of locally generated evidence, stronger capabilities, and better-designed programs. In turn, they support more effective early childhood and livelihoods policies. Over time, Growing Futures aims to help more children grow healthy and ready to learn, support more families in achieving durable economic well-being, and contribute to breaking the intergenerational cycle of poverty in Guatemala.
Guatemala: Fertile soil for evidence-based policymaking
An urgent challenge, and a clear opportunity to act. Although Guatemala is a middle-income country, many children and families still face overlapping deprivations in nutrition, health, early stimulation, and access to quality services, with wide territorial and socioeconomic disparities. Strengthening the links between early childhood development, social protection, health, education, and livelihoods creates an important opportunity to improve how social programs respond to these challenges.
A foundation already in place. From 2023 to 2025, we implemented PROSA in partnership with UVG, establishing the foundations for our work in Guatemala and strengthening a culture of evidence use around early childhood development. PROSA strengthened local capacity, developed a research agenda, and created working relationships with government and civil society. Through this work, we trained more than 400 public officials and over twenty organizations, and supported the launch of new research projects on priority early childhood questions.
Strong partner demand and readiness to act. Guatemala is now part of J-PAL LAC’s Evidence to Policy Partnerships. In a short period, we have built sustained collaborations with the Secretary of Food Security and Nutrition (SESAN), the Ministry of Social Development (MIDES), and the Ministry of Education (MINEDUC). These partnerships respond to a strong demand for data, evidence, and technical support to improve social programs.
A contribution with regional relevance. Central America has been under-represented in rigorous, policy-relevant evaluation and evidence-to-policy work. A stronger presence in Guatemala creates an opportunity to generate locally grounded evidence and implementation lessons that can inform decisions across the region.
In short, Guatemala combines urgent policy challenges, strong partner demand, and clear opportunities to generate and use evidence to improve programs for children and families.
PROSA: Building the foundation for Growing Futures
PROSA, short for Screening and Launching Program, was the first phase of J-PAL LAC and UVG’s work in Guatemala. From 2023 to 2025, it helped build a culture of evidence use around early childhood development by strengthening local capacities, launching new research, and building partnerships with government and civil society. What began as PROSA has since evolved into Growing Futures, a broader platform that brings together strategic partnerships, capacity building, and applied research to address priority policy questions in Guatemala.
Our current work: Growing Futures
Growing Futures is the next phase of our work in Guatemala with UVG, moving beyond a purely early-childhood focus to strengthen the broader evidence ecosystem for social policy in Guatemala and Central America. We build on PROSA’s foundation to support better program design, incubate pilots, and test promising ideas when appropriate, so results can inform scale-ups.
Research questions in our agenda
- Nutrition. We aim to learn which bundles of actions most effectively improve child nutrition in Guatemala’s diverse contexts, and which delivery channels sustain adoption of nutrient-rich diets over time. A core line of inquiry links nutrition with parenting support to test whether integrated approaches can shift both anthropometric and cognitive outcomes. We also want to understand how these approaches can be brought to scale while maintaining quality and cost-effectiveness.
- Early childhood stimulation (ECS). Our agenda seeks to compare scalable stimulation models to identify which formats deliver the strongest and most durable gains for caregiver-child interactions and early learning. We will test when technology or mass media can complement in-person support without diluting quality. A cross-cutting question is how programs can better support caregiver mental health and reduce stress so families can engage fully.
- Preventive health. We want to study how to raise timely uptake of preventive services for pregnant people and young children through incentives, messaging, and improved delivery models. This includes identifying ways to overcome supply-side bottlenecks and to integrate preventive health with nutrition and stimulation services so families experience a seamless package of care. Cost-effectiveness and equity impacts will guide design choices.
- Home environment. We intend to identify which combinations of housing, WASH (Water, sanitation and hygiene), and environmental-health improvements produce the largest benefits for child development in urban and rural settings. A key focus is how to overcome behavioral barriers to adopting safer sanitation, clean water, and more stimulating spaces at home. We also ask how social protection and livelihood supports can enable households to invest in these improvements at scale, sustainably and fairly.
Policy projects and technical assistance
Growing Futures is already supporting a set of projects with government and partner organizations. Together, these efforts translate the initiative’s research agenda into concrete opportunities for program improvement, piloting, and future evaluation.
Technical assistance to Mano a Mano (MIDES):
Mano a Mano is a social program led by the Ministry of Social Development (MIDES) that reaches roughly 93,000 beneficiaries. We are supporting MIDES to develop a theory of change and a set of indicators for the program, helping establish a clear route for future evaluation efforts.
Redesign and piloting of Beca de Capacitación Productiva:
Beca de Capacitación Productiva is a national employability and empowerment program for women living in poverty and extreme poverty in rural areas. We are supporting the redesign and piloting of the program. A key innovation being tested is a Family Prosperity Pact, a simple agreement between the participating woman and her partner that seeks to build household support for the program, reduce conflict, and strengthen its effects.
Re-imagining national administrative data systems (SESAN):
In coordination with the Secretariat for Food Security and Nutrition (SESAN), we are exploring a collaboration to redesign a national data portal that integrates and standardizes data across ministries. This would strengthen the monitoring, evaluation, and use of nutrition-related administrative data across government.
Strengthening a national ECD program (UNICEF and MINEDUC):
Together with UNICEF, we are providing technical support to the Ministry of Education (MINEDUC) for revising and strengthening a national early childhood development program. This work draws on evidence from internationally evaluated programs, pilots innovations, and identifies pathways to scale effective solutions.
Testing program improvements before scale-up: MIDES SDI-Lab:
The MIDES SDI-Lab is being designed as an embedded innovation unit within the Vice Ministry of Policy, Planning, and Evaluation. With support from the Fund of Innovation in Development (FID), the lab will pilot evidence-based improvements to new and existing social programs, test operational changes, compare cost-effectiveness, and help create a permanent pathway for innovation, learning, and future scale-up.
Host university
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| UVG Guatemala |
Program implementers
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| Ministry of Social Development, Guatemala | Mano a mano | Secretaría de Seguridad Alimentaria y Nutricional, Guatemala | Ministry of Education, Guatemala |
Donors
This initiative is supported by Amigos de J-PAL en Guatemala, Grupo IDC, and FID.
Project team
Co-Chairs
- Karen Macours, Co-Chair, Growing Futures; J-PAL Affiliated Professor; Professor, Paris School of Economics
- Mauricio Romero, Co-Chair, Growing Futures; J-PAL Affiliated Professor; Associate Professor of Economics, Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM)
Staff
- Claudia Macías, Deputy Executive Director, J-PAL Latin America and the Caribbean
- Constanza Alarcón Cordón, Policy Manager for Early Childhood, J-PAL Latin America and the Caribbean
- Sandra Sandoval, Senior Policy Associate, J-PAL Latin America and the Caribbean
- Mónica García Salas, Policy Associate, J-PAL Latin America and the Caribbean
Scaling climate-resilient biofortified maize in Guatemala
This project examines the economic, cultural, and taste-related barriers to scaling climate-resilient biofortified maize among diverse smallholder populations in Guatemala. The research seeks to understand what limits adoption and what this implies for nutrition-sensitive agricultural policy and program design.
Team: Karen Macours (Paris School of Economics), Paola Malilla (Paris School of Economics), and Jessica Rudder (Oregon State University)
For Researchers
Request for proposals (RFP)
Growing Futures will include a competitive Request for Proposals (RFP) to support policy-relevant research aligned with priority questions in early childhood development, social protection, health, education, and livelihoods in Guatemala. Through this mechanism, J-PAL LAC and UVG will support projects with strong potential for learning, adaptation, and scale.
Additional details on the research agenda, eligibility, timeline, and application process will be shared soon.
RFP details coming soon