Sustaining Nurturing Care through the child’s ecological environment: Innovative approaches and experiences from Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, Zambia, and Lesotho.

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Ensuring optimal child development requires enabling environment and strengthening the quality of Nurturing Care (NC) to meet children’s needs in maternal, newborn and child health and nutrition services – responsive caregiving, opportunities for early learning, and safety and security. Creating enabling environments for sustainable nurturing care requires a lot of different people and organizations to participate. All the stakeholders who are relevant in the child’s ecological environment need to join in the conversation and practice. That includes caregivers (female and male) and families, childcare/daycare and early childhood education services/facilities, including organizations or sectors from many different parts of government (e.g. health, ECD, nutrition, education, child protection) as well as civil society, professional associations, academia, implementation partners and funding partners. Stakeholders who have not traditionally been part of the early childhood development dialogue, such as faith-based communities also play critical role in advocacy and behavior change efforts. Advocacy not only changes the minds of the public and decision-makers, but also helps unite the stakeholders working for ECD impacting sustained quality care and education for the most vulnerable children.
Catholic Relief Services will share its multi-country leading programs’ innovative approaches to sustainably translating NC support at various levels of the child’s ecological environment. The panel will offer evidence-based perspectives on how working with families, childcare providers, and local and faith-based leaders and community members early on helps to tailor NC interventions to their context with a sense of ownership. The innovative approaches include the most critical piece of Nurturing Care response: SMART Couple Approach for Male Engagement, Integrated Early Childhood Development and Micro-Business Management Model for quality daycare, and Interfaith Community Networking and Advocacy for favorable national policy and financing for impactful uptake and practices of Nurturing Care within families, communities, and sector programs.

Sub Unit

• Early Childhood Development SIG

Chair

• Pauline Silver Sr Acayo, Catholic releife Services

Individual Presentations

• Sustaining quality childcare and early childhood development services in the industrial areas of Lesotho - MAKHOTSO ENEY MOELETSI, CATHOLIC RELIEF SERVICES

• Strengthening marriage relationships for quality early childhood care and development. - Claire Kangombe Mukumbuta, Catholic Relief Services

• Interfaith advocacy for influencing policy and funding in holistic early childhood development: Experiences from Kenya, Tanzania, and Mozambique - Tobias Opiyo, Catholic Relief Services