Early Childhood Development in Crisis

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.

Past and Present Projects

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.  

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.

Report and blog

Remote 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.

Summary of findings

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.

Report

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

The New Humanitarian: Childcare is a critical need for women refugees. It must be made a priority

Professors of Practice Focus on Raising Children in Refugee Camps