Early Childhood Matters 2019 - Early Childhood Matters

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Table of contents

Editorial

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To thrive: a goal for children everywhere

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.

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Early childhood: why we need to invest in the future of cities

Geraldo Júlio

Solid Start: supporting municipalities to tailor solutions for children’s first 1000 days

Hugo de Jonge

Early childhood development at the heart of nutrition

Daniel Kablan Duncan

Clean air, healthy children and decent work

María Fernanda Espinosa

The Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement: striving for impact at scale

Gerda Verburg

Little lungs, not polar bears: the new face of climate change

Kate Hampton, Rob Hughes and Matt Whitney

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.

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Using the power of mass media to achieve impact at scale: an experiment that worked

Sherrie Westin

The Global Scale for Early Development (GSED)

GSED team

The Global Financing Facility: investing in the early years

Mariam Claeson

Key principles for financing a qualified early childhood workforce

Mark Roland and Michelle Neuman

Inter-sectoral coordination in early childhood systems: the Primokiz approach

Konstantina Rentzou, Mihaela Ionescu, Philine Zimmerli and Cristiana Boca

Loving fathers, thriving children: opportunities for scaling gender-transformative approaches

Helena Duch, Kate Doyle, Anjalee Kohli, Ruti G. Levtov and Rebecka Lundgren

Lessons learned from national government- led efforts to reduce adolescent pregnancy in Chile, England and Ethiopia

Venkatraman Chandra-Mouli, Marina Plesons, Alison Hadley, Matilde Maddaleno, Lemessa Oljira, Senait Tibebu, Elsie Akwara and Danielle Engel

Scaling nurturing care through a multi-sectoral, bottom-up approach in the Kyrgyz Republic

Sweta Shah and Burulai Aitikulova

Giving newborns the best start: scaling-up interventions to increase early initiation of breastfeeding in South East Asia

Joy Miller Del Rosso

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.

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Increasing the impact of early childhood programmes through behavioural science: initial prospects

Sam Sternin

Istanbul95: innovating with partners

Yiğit Aksakoğlu

The Urban95 Challenge: crowdsourcing ideas to improve city livability for caregivers and kids

Ardan Kockelkoren

Philanthropy and government working together for a child-friendly Shenzhen

Wenfeng Huang

Building cognitive capital, brightening China’s future: piloting community- based early childhood programming

Xuefeng Chen and Qi Zhao

BRAC Humanitarian Play Lab: when playing becomes healing

Erum Mariam, Syeda Sazia Zaman, Sakila Yesmin, Sadaf Huq and Sarwat Sarah Sarwar

From little ripples to big waves: comprehensive early childhood programming for young refugee children

Kelsey Dalrymple and Sara-Christine Dallain

LEAPS: a strategy to benefit young children and youth

Aisha K. Yousafzai, Muneera A. Rasheed, Saima Siyal, Emily Franchett, Christopher Sudfeld, Liliana A. Ponguta, Chin Reyes and Günther Fink

mThrive: a nurturing care app that supports community health workers

Rob Hughes, Beatrice Wasunna, Dickens Omedo and Najma Rashid

Empowering frontline early childhood workers through technology in India

Mohini Kak

Global impressions

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.

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Using cash transfers to boost early childhood development: training parents on child stimulation

Julieta M. Trias, Laura B. Rawlings and Melissa Zumaeta Aurazo

The case for inclusive education

Dragana Sretenov and Nafisa Baboo

Air pollution and child health: prescribing clean air

Julia Gorman and Marie-Noël Bruné Drisse

The effects of transportation on early childhood development

Julien Vincelot and Patrin Watanatada

Designing streets for kids: possibilities for children in the built environment

Skye Duncan, Ankita Chachra and Annie Peyton

Drone photography improves understanding of spaces for children in Lima

Martin Benavides Abanto and Juan León Jara-Almonte

Issue details

The views expressed in Early Childhood Matters are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Van Leer Foundation. Work featured is not necessarily funded by the Van Leer Foundation.

Reproduction of articles by photocopying or electronic means for non-commercial purposes is permitted. However, it is requested that the author, Early Childhood Matters and Van Leer Foundation are cited as the source of the information. Permission must be obtained to use photos. ISSN 1387-9553

Cover: Father and child sharing a special moment together in Mumbai, India.

Photo: Dhiraj Singh/Van Leer Foundation

This 2019 issue of Early Childhood Matters is no. 128 in the series. Also published in Spanish: Espacio para la Infancia (ISSN 1566-6476)

Colophon

Editor

Joan Lombardi

Guest editor, Early Childhood Matters

Text editing

Margaret Mellor

Graphic design

Laura de Jongh

Illustrations

Gemma Pauwels

Production support

Cathleen Owens

Resources

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