Early Childhood Matters 2018

The 2018 edition of Early Childhood Matters features keynote contributions from the President of Colombia, Juan Manuel Santos Calderón, on the ‘De Cero a Siempre’ policy; Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the WHO, on nurturing care; IRC President David W. Miliband on the humanitarian system and young children; and UN Special Representative Marta Santos Pais on violence prevention.

The 26 articles in this edition range across continents and topic, from a parenting programme informed by the Gross National Happiness policy in Bhutan to community health workers’ use of technology to treat maternal depression in Pakistan. Highlighting innovations, the path to scale and emerging initiatives in the field, ECM is again guest-edited by international early childhood expert Joan Lombardi.

Select language

Download social media package

Editorial

Towards nurturing care: advancing early childhood development in 2018

Joan Lombardi

Leadership

Bold leadership – or as we see it, the ability to mobilise people to solve important problems collectively – is crucial to achieving results for young children. In this section, leaders from governments, international organisations and funders around the world talk about why they have chosen to put babies, toddlers and the people who care for them high on their agenda.

Violence prevention must start in early childhood

Marta Santos Pais

Changing the humanitarian system for young children living in conflict and crisis

David W. Miliband et al.

Placing nurturing care at the centre of global initiatives to improve child health and development

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus

‘De Cero a Siempre’, a commitment to our children’s early years

Juan Manuel Santos Calderón

Scaling

There are many pathways to scale – taking a successful small programme, and making it work for hundreds of thousands of children – but the challenges are complex. In this section, practitioners and policymakers explore issues such as coordinating across different parts of government, financing, recruiting and training large numbers of workers, testing and learning, and putting systems in place that deliver consistent, cost-effective quality.

Building country ownership and investments through the Global Partnership for Education

Christin McConnell

Policy lessons for strengthening and supporting the early childhood workforce

Michelle Neuman et al.

Learning from Saving Brains: informing policies and scale-up for early childhood

Kate Milner et al.

Every Woman Every Child: investing in the early years for sustainable development

Nana Taona Kuo

Latin America and the potential of the Nurturing Care Framework as a platform for scale

Leonardo Yánez et al.

Reaching the youngest children: an approach for health system integration

Katelin Gray et al.

Parenting for happiness: blending child well-being and Gross National Happiness

Karma Gayleg

‘Criança Feliz’: A programme to break the cycle of poverty and reduce the inequality in Brazil

Halim Antonio Girade

Innovations

Before good practices can be taken to scale, we first need good ideas. In this section, we focus on innovations – new or emerging programmes, policies or services which have the potential to meet the needs of young children and their caregivers in a wider range of contexts.

It takes a city: making early childhood a strategic priority in Tel Aviv

Daniella Ben-Attar

Urban95: creating cities for the youngest people

Patrin Watanatada

A Better Start: tackling inequity through community-wide action on early childhood development

Chris Cuthbert

Using technology to train health workers to treat maternal depression at scale: a new model from Pakistan

Shamsa Zafar

Training caregivers to transform children’s lives

Erica Salomone et al.

Supporting refugee, internally displaced and marginalised host community parents in the Arab region

Ghassan Issa et al.

Lifelong impact of nutrition in the first thousand days after conception

Jaap Seidell et al.

Short takes on current issues

In this section, we present brief summaries of initiatives, publications or other resources which have come to our attention in the past year and which we believe deserve a wider audience.

Pollution and child development

Philip J. Landrigan

Why water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) are fundamental to early childhood development

Amy Keegan

Moving the needle on employer- supported childcare: from business case research to action

Carmen Niethammer et al.

Childcare from the perspective of women informal workers

Rachel Moussié

IDELA: leveraging child-centred evidence to change policy, practice and investment

Sara Poehlman et al.

Think Future – a gathering of unlike minds in support of early years innovation

Sonja Giese

Issue Colophon

Production editor: Teresa Moreno
Guest editor: Joan Lombardi
Consultant editor: Andrew Wright
Text editing: Margaret Mellor
Graphic design: Laura de Jongh

Social media package

Hoping this issue of Early Childhood Matters is a valuable resource for you, we encourage to share with your network. Below some infographics, and a more detailed guidelines with suggested messages and tweets.

Launch infographic Download

Map infographic Download

Author quotes Download

Subscribe to Early Childhood Matters.

Tell us a bit about yourself

This information is for research purposes and will not be added to our mailing list or used to send you unsolicited mail unless you opt-in.

Please add me to the mailing list and keep me up to date with news and events from the Bernard van Leer Foundation

See how we use your personal data by reading our privacy statement.

Enjoy reading

Thank you for downloading Early Childhood Matters.

Download