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ARNEC together with UNICEF Regional Office for South Asia (ROSA) is pleased to host the webinar entitled, 'Building Futures: Applying the Early Childhood Development Service Quality Standards for South Asia.'

REGISTER NOW! 

This webinar aims to: 

(1) Introduce and provide an overview of the ECD Service Quality Standards and Guidelines, including the planning, implementation, mentoring and monitoring and regulation of these services. 

(2) Encourage countries, especially in South Asia to think about how they can apply these ECD service quality standards given their own contextualized specifications for quality. 

(3) Reinforce how these standards can develop a common understanding of the holistic, integrated and developmentally appropriate nature of quality in ECD among all stakeholders by serving as a common point of reference, which to date has not existed in the South Asian context. 

Prof. Venita Kaul will be making the presentation on the ECD Service Quality Standards. 

Resources speakers:

(1) Dr. Sheldon Shaeffer, Chair, Board of Directors, ARNEC

(2) Ms. Mahmuda Akhter, Executive Director of Institute of Child and Human Development (ICHD) and Vice-Chair of the Executive Board of Bangladesh ECD Network (BEN)

(3) Representatives from countries (To follow)

The following questions shall be explored: 

1. Why is there a need for ECD service quality standards in the South Asia region?

2. What are the ECD service quality standards and who can use them?

3. How can these standards be used? What are the perceptions of stakeholders within countries in the Asia-Pacific Region of the standards – why are these important and how can these standards be applied based on their own context and experiences?  

Moderator: Mita Gupta, Early Childhood Development Specialist and Disability Inclusive Education focal point at the UNICEF Regional Office for South Asia.

Click here to view t he full announcement.

(1) For East and South East Asia (March 11, 1pm BKK time) - register here 

(2) For South Asia (March 9, 3:30pm BKK time) - register here 

The webinar aims to raise awareness, and provide an opportunity for government officials, development partners, and other education stakeholders, to discuss on the key findings, lessons learned and recommendations from the situation analysis. This will also be an opportunity for exchanges and learning between countries.

UNESCO and UNICEF have commissioned Cambridge Education to undertake this Rapid Situation Analysis from April 2020 to February 2021 with the following objectives:

(a) assess and estimate the various impacts of the COVID-19 epidemic on the education sector and stakeholders in the East Asia, Southeast Asia and South Asia sub-regions;

(b) examine implications on progress towards SDG4-Education 2030.

Click here to download a copy of the COVID-19 Education Reponse Policy. 

Register now! ARNEC Webinar Series 2, No.3. 

ARNEC is pleased to host the webinar series entitled, 'Nurturing care for young children: seeking solutions for addressing disparities heightened by the impact of COVID-19'.

For this webinar series, the thematic focus will be on health and nutrition, early learning, responsive caregiving, and child safety and security, all of which are dimensions of nurturing care. The series will explore the long-term impact of COVID-19 on these nurturing care components, especially on the most vulnerable groups, and draw out innovations and solutions from the countries as they design and implement their recovery and resiliency plans.

ARNEC aims to mobilise the ECD community in the region, particularly practitioners, policy makers, and advocates at the country level, to share community, local and/or country-level solutions which adapt nurturing care practices and ECD programmes to the current realities and long-term effects of COVID-19.

The third webinar in the series focuses on the status and solutions in promoting responsive caregiving for young children in the Asia-Pacific region during and beyond the pandemic. A special emphasis will also be made on building resilience and the positive bond between caregivers and young children through playful parenting in support of pandemic recovery in the home and community.

The following questions shall be explored:

1.    What are the long-term effects of COVID-19 on responsive caregiving and parenting? 

2.    How do countries and governments strengthen their parenting programs and interventions to respond to the challenges of COVID-19, both short- and long-term?

3.    What evidence have we generated to elevate the role of play to support home-based ECD interventions as part of pandemic recovery and to support policy change?

4.    What have we learned about parenting education interventions during the pandemic and how do we use these experiences to inform recovery strategies and ECD investments?

5.    What evidence-based resources and tools are available to support parents and caregivers as they engage their young children in home-based developmental practices? 

Panellists:

1)Dr Jamie M. Lachman, Department of Social Policy & Intervention, University of Oxford / University of Glasgow

2) Dr. Dipu Shakya Education Specialist, UNICEF Nepal

3) Sandipan Paul, Education Specialist, UNICEF Pacific

Moderator: Shikha Jain, Technical Advisor in Plan India and ARNEC Steering Committee member (Core Team Representative)

View the fulll announcement here!