Better jobs and brighter futures: Investing in childcare to build human capital
Wednesday, April 7, 2021, 9:00 -10:15 am EST
Link to Register
The World Bank receives a lot of questions about how they support early childhood development. To address this they launched this webinar series to describe how they work with countries to improve opportunities for young children, as well as their initiatives to build capacity and share knowledge across countries and partners. Each webinar will include time for substantive discussion. The first webinar was held on 10 February 2021.
This second session briefly shared key findings from the World Bank report: "Better jobs and brighter futures: Investing in childcare to build human capital". It described plans to expand the World Bank’s work in early childhood and invited several World Bank staff to share information on the work they are doing in different countries.
There was substantial time for discussion and questions and answers during the session. Amanda Devercelli and Frances Beaton-Day shared key findings on the paper, including new evidence on the current status of childcare provision, an estimate of the global gaps in access and specific actions that countries can take to expand access to quality, affordable childcare for all families that need it, especially the most vulnerable, to support a more resilient and inclusive recovery from the pandemic. Following that intro, participants heard from two World Bank teams working on childcare at the country level.
Future webinars in the series:
Scaling up measurement of early childhood outcomes and quality of early learning environments
Wednesday, May 12, 2021, 8:30 -10 am EST
Link to Register
The third session focused on the 'Scaling up measurement in early childhood' initiative, which works to support countries to measure early childhood outcomes and the quality of early learning environments together, while promoting the generation of globally-comparable reliable data. In this webinar, Elaine Ding, Diego Luna Bazaldua and Adelle Pushparatnam shared an overview of several initiatives that the team has worked on, including the identification of a core set of items to measure preschool developmental outcomes, the development of Teach ECE (a classroom observation tool that captures the quality of early learning environments, building on the success of Teach primary), and the use of a phone survey to capture the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on young children and their families. During the session, participants shared some of the resources available to support policymakers, partners and other stakeholders in their early childhood measurement efforts.
The early years fellowship: Building the next generation of leaders in early childhood
Wednesday, June 9, 2021, 9:30-11 am EST
Link to Register
In the fourth session, WHO described the Early years fellowship, a program to build the capacity within countries on ECD and to identify and support the next generation of leaders in early childhood. These young professionals are having an incredible impact on the World Bank’s capacity to engage in early childhood across health, nutrition, education and social protection. First, Melissa Kelly, Early years fellowship coordinator, shared an overview of how the program is working with 25 fellows to support 34 countries and how WHO supports their professional development. Participants had the opportunity to hear from some of the fellows about how their efforts have contributed to improved early childhood policies and services in their countries. There was substantial time for discussion with the fellows.
