Soroptimist International UNESCO Representative, Rina Dupriet, attended the Education For All working group: Early Childhood Care and Education. She reports back.
The first world conference on Early Childhood Care and
Education (ECCE) organised by UNESCO (Moscow 2010) in cooperation with the
Russian Federation, gave a fresh impetus
to accelerating efforts to support early childhood care and education. For this
reason, and to contribute to implementing the Framework for Action and
Cooperation, the action agenda adopted at the world conference inscribed in its
2012-2013 biennal programme, the working group on Education For All of
the NGO/UNESCO decided to organise one of the commitee’s international days in
2012.
The decision was to hold the colloquium during the Education For All
(EFA) working group on April 23, 2012 where the focus would
be on advocating the first goal of EFA. This took place during Global Action Week (22-28 April) which is an awareness raising week to raise awareness of Education For All.
The seminar was important because it contributed to an
enhanced partnership on the topic of ECCE. In particular, it aims to highlight
the role and contribution of NGOs to the development and improvement of ECCE
and addresses the following themes around which the NGOs affiliated with UNESCO
are especially active through two actions:
- The creation of an original, flexible
and locally relevant ECCE provision to support young children and
families and the improvement in the quality of existing provision to
contribute to achieving EFA goals and sustainable development.
Such provision prepares young children for primary school through
play-based and active pedagogical approaches and not through the academic
approaches typically used with other children.
- The training of teachers,
educators, childcare and health workers and all other actors involved
directly or indirectly in ECCE, including administrative and service
personnel.
To illustrate these themes, contributors described the specific
social and cultural contexts in which NGO’s actions were undertaken and
highlight the contents and methods used in their actions. They presented the
outcome, success, failures and challenges and follow up. All the experts
responded to the concrete experiences bringing in their own expertise.
SI participated in the general discussion and debated how we can
together work to assist the world’s children.
The concluding remarks from Ms Maki Hayashikawa, Chief of Basic
Education, showed us that it’s imperative to forge creative partnerships with
NGOs and other partners so as to scale up our effort toward 2015 and beyond.
Soroptimist International works towards this goal through out
Educate to Lead programme. We have to present to UNESCO our actions all
over the world, our goals and our projects whenever possible. Please
remember to report your club work on education and leadership through the
online reporting database to assist us with this.
Report your work here: www./reports.soroptimistinternational.org
Find out more about SI’s focus on education and leadership here: www.soroptimistinternational.org/our-projects/educate-to-lead