Promoting Gender Responsive Parenting in Humanitarian Contexts in Myanmar

• In Event: Children as peacebuilders?: Lessons learned about using Early Childhood Development to strengthen peacebuilding, conflict-sensitivity, and social cohesion in fragile settings

Proposal

Youngest children are most vulnerable to the immediate and long-term impacts of conflict and crisis. Early Childhood Development (ECD) programming does not occur in a vacuum and any intervention interacts with and becomes a part of the context. ECD programming has important potential to contribute to peace, social cohesion and resilience. Plan International Myanmar’s (PIM’s) ECD program aims to build strong foundations for children aged 0-8 years, particularly in areas affected by protracted crisis.

With funding from Australian Aid, PIM implemented an Early Childhood Development in Emergencies (ECDiE) project between 2018 and 2022, to support development and wellbeing of children 0-8 in central Rakhine state, which has experienced ongoing armed conflict. Humanitarian and development needs are extremely high, with vulnerability to natural disasters, food insecurity, chronic poverty, and structural inequalities along ethnic, linguistic, religious and gender lines. The project included a focus on parenting in emergencies, to help support parents and their children in humanitarian contexts. The project reached more than 3100 women, men, girls and boys through activities including establishment of early learning centers and playgroups, formation of mothers’ and fathers’ groups, and delivery of a parenting in emergencies curriculum. Cognizant that in the context of conflict and poverty, many parents were facing numerous challenges, the parenting sessions offered a range of topics on issues such as stress management, child needs, behavior, co-parenting, conflict management, and different support strategies to help children to be happy, healthy, smart and strong. The program worked to improve the knowledge, attitudes and practices that support holistic development of girls and boys and promoted gender equality and resilience at household and community level, as well as improved social cohesion in communities affected by humanitarian crises.

Additionally, PIM’s home-schooling package focused on school readiness for children ages 3-5, who did not have access to ECD services or were not able to attend ECD centers due to protracted conflict and crisis. Aligned with the national kindergarten curriculum, the package included age-appropriate literacy, numeracy, and science, together with worksheets that children could use, lesson plans which focused on learning through play activities and learning materials, along with user-friendly and age-appropriate instructional videos on ECD and gender. This home-based learning approach helped to prepare children to join primary schools with foundational literacy and numeracy skills whilst also supporting parents and caregivers to learn effective home-schooling techniques, advance holistic development of children, and address harmful gender norms as part of ECD programming.

In this presentation, how ECD programming can contribute to peace, social cohesion and resilience will be discussed, based on experiences in Myanmar. This includes how children can be agents of change for their parents, through peacebuilding and resiliency skills promoted through the ECD program. The importance of adapting ECD interventions to ensure that these do not worsen conflict dynamics, of community-led work that responds to community needs and understandings of peace, and builds on community strengths and positive values will also be shared.

Author

• Meena Narula, Plan International