Non-State Actors Building Resilience through Quality ECD in Emergencies

• In Event: Roundtable Group 6
  In Refereed Roundtable Session: Meeting the educational needs of children and youth in emergencies

Proposal

Over the past decade, emergencies have become frequent, affecting millions of people worldwide (UNESCO, 2022). Young children are the most affected by these crises. Between 2018 and 2021, over 1.5 million children were born in refugee settings, representing an estimated 380,000 young children born into displacement each year (UNHCR,2022). Emergencies are detrimental for both children and their parents due to limited access to preventive and curative health services, high risks of malnutrition, elevated levels of insecurity and violence, and socioeconomic adversity (World Health Organisation, 2020).

Quality Early Childhood Development (ECD) is important as it yields the highest returns on investment than any other level of education (J.J. Heckman, 2012). Childcare and quality ECD also positively impacts women’s labor force participation and their income (Innovations for Poverty Action, 2022). Despite these benefits, education is not viewed as a central pillar of humanitarian response, (Save The Children, UK, 2003) in comparison to health, food, and shelter which are considered to be immediate and lifesaving.

Non-state actors play a crucial role in challenging this status quo. They not only demand that education becomes a humanitarian agenda but also take the initiative themselves to run innovative programs to restore a sense of normalcy for both children and parents.

The Global Schools Forum (GSF), a community of 84 non-state actors delivering education across 55 low-middle-income countries, wants to avail the opportunity at CIES to host a refereed group panel discussion with its pioneering partners like Kidogo, BRAC, Street Child, Learn to Play, aeioTU etc that are implementing innovative ECD programs in emergency contexts. We will also bring organizations like INEE, and UNICEF with sectoral expertise to the panel. We’ll explore how the panelists, through their programs, have attempted to build community resilience, promote social cohesion, and generate inter-generational benefits for young children and adults in the long term.

Our discussion will attempt to contribute to the limited discourse on education as a humanitarian response (Sinclair, 2002; Davies and Talbot, 2008) by focusing on the subjective experiences of non-state actors involved in advocating for and delivering such engagements. We will examine themes like a) how non-state actors improve coordination between ministries, (b) how they integrate concepts of peace, tolerance, and environmental protection through play-based activities, and (c) how they ensure communities are more likely to carry these feelings of harmony and peace with them into adulthood. We will also discuss persisting gaps that warrant further research from the perspective of non-state actors, such as the need for robust data systems, cost-effectiveness analyses etc.

Authors

• Priyanka Upreti, Global Schools Forum

• Aashti Zaidi, Global Schools Forum

• Peter John Colenso, Global Schools Forum