EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT IN CRISIS
EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT
Almost 90 million children under the age of seven have lived their entire lives in war and conflict. They’ve endured unthinkable violence and loss during a critically important time in their development. Yet there are many open questions about how to best support young children in these contexts. This theme focuses on filling research, policy, and practice gaps in collaboration with humanitarian and early
childhood partners around the world. Our projects address cutting-edge questions on technical priorities, implementation science, and local perspectives. How can we use remote approaches to best support young children in crisis contexts? How do children experience living in crisis and how can we use their perspectives to better design our responses? How can we better include ECD services in core humanitarian responses? We are working with Sesame Workshop, UNICEF, Save the Children Denmark, the LEGO Foundation, and other partners to better understand and address these critical questions.
Young Children in Humanitarian and COVID-19 Crises
The long-term consequences of COVID-19 have been tough for children around the world, but even more so for young children already in humanitarian crisis, whether due to conflict, natural disasters, or economic and political upheaval.
This book investigates how organizations around the world responded to these dual challenges, identifying solutions, and learning opportunities to help to support young children in ongoing and future crises. Drawing on research and voices from the Global South, this book showcases innovations to mobilize new funds and re-allocate existing resources to protect children during the pandemic. It provides important evidence on understudied and overlooked vulnerable populations, recognizing that researchers from the Global South are best positioned to fill these research gaps, contextualize findings, and support the uptake and adoption of recommendations by local decision-makers and practitioners in those same contexts.
END OF PROGRAM EVALUATION OF THE BAYTNA HUB INITIATIVE
We are conducting an evaluation of Amna’s Baytna program, a trauma- and identity-informed early childhood development (ECD) program designed specifically for refugee children and caregivers. The program celebrates children’s cultural identities and histories; uses play, art, dance, storytelling, and mindfulness to help children begin to process and heal from traumatic experiences; and provides a network of nurturing relationships to help children and their families regain a sense of safety and belonging. Since its inception nearly three years ago, Baytna has been cited as an example of best practice by Moving Mind Alliance, Nurturing Care Framework, UNESCO Global Monitoring Report for Education, and Early Childhood Matters. Lessons learned will inform potential scale-up or program modifications.
COORDINATION FOR EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT IN EMERGENCIES
In collaboration with Sesame Workshop, we developed lessons learned and practical tips for strengthening inclusion of ECD in humanitarian needs assessments and response plans. We launched a learning cohort comprised of individuals supporting ECD coordination in Bangladesh, Colombia, Jordan, and Lebanon to generate learnings from their work and to share these learnings with key stakeholders.
In October 2022, we shifted to the second phase of this work, which focuses on better understanding the different roles that individual ECDiE coordinators can play at the country or crisis level. This focus enables the cohort to generate more concrete, actionable learnings about why and how humanitarian stakeholders should invest in deploying ECDiE coordinators in other contexts. We also welcomed new members to our cohort, now drawing insights from colleagues in Bangladesh, Colombia, Jordan, Uganda, Ukraine, and Syria. They come from a wide range of organizations and government roles and each has a unique mandate in their own context. Our most recent work summarizes findings and recommendations on a potential development of an ECDiE Coordinator Toolbox.
Report: Promoting Country-Based Humanitarian Leadership for ECDiE Phase 2: Discussion Brief
Report: Development of an ECDiE Coordinator Toolbox
CHILDCARE IN HUMANITARIAN CRISES
Globally, more than 40% of all children below primary-school entry age do not have access to the childcare they need, including millions of children and their caregivers affected by humanitarian crises. Childcare is especially important in humanitarian settings. In these contexts, primary caregivers often have fewer resources and less time to provide socioemotional and cognitive stimulation for their children while taking care of themselves. In collaboration with UNICEF, we reviewed childcare needs and identified critical elements for effective childcare in emergency contexts, highlighting three promising delivery models.
REMOVE DELIVERY OF EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT (ECD) PROGRAMS IN SETTINGS AFFECTED BY CRISIS AND CONFLICT
The COVID-19 pandemic pushed the global ECD community to test ways to remotely reach children on a new scale, creating an environment in which new evidence is constantly generated. We conducted a rapid evidence review on remote modalities for early childhood to highlight emerging trends, synthesize existing lessons, and pose questions for further learning. Findings were published in a brief in English, Spanish, Arabic, and Bangla and disseminated through a webinar hosted by ECDAN.
EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT IN HUMANITARIAN STANDARDS AND GUIDANCE
One major obstacle to providing quality early childhood services in humanitarian contexts is the limited operational guidance that is integrated to the humanitarian response system. To fill this gap, we reviewed existing humanitarian standards to assess the extent to which early childhood interventions and the needs of infants, young children, and caregivers are included. We then contributed to revisions of the Inter-agency Network for Education in Emergencies Minimum Standards for Education.
ASSESSMENT OF PROGRAMS FOR EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT IN CRISIS CONTEXTS
The Humanitarian Collaborative team is working with the INEE ECD Task Team to conduct study to better understand the global landscape of current Early Childhood Development programming in humanitarian settings, as well as the needs of practitioners in the field to improve program implementation and quality. This information will inform future priorities to strengthen and expand early childhood programming in humanitarian settings.
UNITED NATIONS GLOBAL REFUGEE FORUM
The Humanitarian Collaborative team contributed to the United Nations Global Framework for Refugee Education, the guiding document that UN member states will use to set policy, allocate funding, and track progress over the next four years. The team was invited to the first ever Global Refugee Forum in Geneva, Switzerland and presented the IRC PhotoVoice Project at the Forums’ Marketplace of Good Practices.
HIGHLIGHTS
“Photovoice” Project in Turkey, March 2024
Review of Early Childhood Development Working Group in Bangladesh, November 2023
The New Humanitarian: Childcare is a critical need for women refugees. It must be made a priority, May 2022
Professors of Practice Focus on Raising Children in Refugee Camps, February 2020