Overview of workshops in Arab countries

Photo credit: © UNICEF/UNI321519/Fazel

Following the release of a thematic brief Nurturing care for children living in humanitarian settings, the Arab Network for Early Childhood (ANECD), International Rescue Committee (IRC), Save the Children, UNICEF and the World Health Organization came together to disseminate the brief and foster country-level action.

A global working group was formed in early 2021 comprising of representatives from the same five organizations at global and regional levels. Following a series of consultations, they supported national task teams in Iraq, Jordan, Palestine, and Syria to organize multisectoral and multistakeholder workshops between October and December 2021.

The five workshops included participants from different sectors, and included governmental and non-governmental organizations, academia, and other stakeholder groups, thus deepening or catalyzing multisectoral collaborations for early childhood development. They varied in duration (1 to 3 days), language (Arabic only, Arabic with English translation), and modality (virtual, in-person, or mixed).

Each workshop sought to help realize the goal of identifying how programme planners and implementers can minimize the impact that emergencies have on the lives of young children and their families and support decision makers on adapting existing efforts given the specific needs and challenges of context-specific crises.

National task teams - consisting of country representation from the partnering organizations - were the key drivers in the process of framing and contextualizing these workshops. The global working group worked closely with each national task team to prepare the workshops. They also developed a set of materials for use or adaption by each team (e.g., pre-recorded presentations in Arabic, agendas, session plans for group work).

The following cross-cutting themes emerged from the workshops (see the overview report for more details).

  • Addressing challenges and making evidence-driven decisions on policy and legislation related to ECD requires cross-sectoral governance mechanisms.
  • Effective policymaking for ECD requires the availability of data.
  • Ensuring national ECD policies and strategies include the treatment of refugees and internally-displaced people as an explicit sub-group of the population that has specified needs varied from one context to the other.
  • While there was ample participation of “accountable” government entities in the workshop discussions, the need to expand the ECD conversation to include other government stakeholders into the fold was seen as critical.

The following are the lessons learned from the workshops (see the overview report for more details).

  • It is important to engage partners regionally and nationally.
  • Embed current political planning as the thematic focus of the workshops.
  • It is important to build and maintain national ECD “institutions” and task teams.
  • There is variable understanding of nurturing care.

Background materials

  • Overview report summarizing the workshop preparations, cross-cutting themes and lessons learned across the five workshops (AR, EN)
  • Pre-recorded presentations by WHO and UNICEF (AR, EN)
  • Presentation from the Arab Network for Early Childhood (AR, EN)
  • Nurturing care for children living in humanitarian settings (AR, EN, SP)

Workshops

Iraq
Hosted by the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs Child Welfare Commission in collaboration with the International Rescue Committee, Save the Children and UNICEF.
Agenda
Meeting report and priority actions (AR, EN)

Jordan
Hosted by the National Council for Family Affairs with support from the International Rescue Committee.
Agenda
Meeting report and priority actions (AR, EN)

Palestine
Hosted by the Ministry of Social Development in collaboration with UNICEF, WHO, and the Palestinian Network for Early Childhood Development.
Invitation
Agenda
Meeting report and priority actions (AR, EN)

Syria
Hosted by the Ministry of Health in collaboration with UNICEF, WHO and the Aga Khan Development Network.
Agenda (AR)
Meeting report and priority actions (AR, EN)

North-West Syria
Co-hosted by the International Rescue Committee, Save the Children and UNICEF.
Agenda
Meeting report and priority actions (AR, EN)

 

To see this page in Arabic visit: https://nurturing-care.org/events/arabic_advancing-nurturing-care-in-humanitarian-settings/

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