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ANECD Update #13

 
  1. Launching of the 2020 Countdown Country Profiles on ECD

The 2020 countdown country profiles on ECD will be launched this year through a virtual event on November 23, 2020. The Profiles give a clear picture of the situation of ECD by country and draw attention to progress as well as gaps, especially in data pertaining to the youngest children and in measuring services and practices to improve nurturing care. An initial set of 91 country profiles was released in 2018 and then expanded to 138 low- and middle-income countries in 2019. This year, the existing profiles cover 197 countries, including new profiles for high-income countries.

 

The event is jointly hosted by UNICEF and the Nurturing Care for Early Childhood Development Metrics Joint Technical Working Group of the Countdown to 2030. The director of ANECD, Dr. Ghassan Issa, will participate among other experts and representatives to discuss the current state of knowledge on ECD and rally partners around investing in strengthening the availability, quality and strategic use of data on ECD to support country and cross-country action and monitoring. The event will be moderated by the Associate Director of the Data and Analytics Section from UNICEF, Mr. Mark Hereward, while the participating panelists are:

  • Omar Abdi, Deputy Executive Director, UNICEF
  • Linda Richter, Distinguished Professor, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa
  • Ghassan Issa, General Coordinator, Arab Network for ECD, Arab Resource Collective
  • Cesar Victora, Emeritus Professor, Federal University of Pelotas, Brazil
  • Claudia Cappa, Senior Adviser Statistics and Monitoring, Data and Analytics Section, UNICEF
  • Tonatiuh Barrientos, Director of the Center for Population Health Research, National Institute of Public Health, Mexico
  • Felix Phiri, Director of the National Nutrition Body, Malawi
  • Anshu Banerjee, Director, Department of Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health and Ageing, World Health Organization

To join the event, register now here


The Lancet: Data for action on early childhood development

Professor Linda Richter, from the University of Witwatersrand, Mrs. Claudia Cappa, Senior Advisor Statistics and Monitoring from UNICEF, Dr. Ghassan Issa, the director of ANECD, Mrs. Chunling Lu, Associate Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine, Mrs. Nicole Petrowski, Consultant at UNICEF, and Mrs. Sara N Naicker, Research project manager at the University of Witwatersrand, has reviewed and commented on the data that is revealed in the new updated ECD country profiles. The work on the Comment was supported by the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Collective Fund Award, and the article was then published in the commentary section of the Lancet Journal.

The article analyzes the results and the methodologies used to collect the data in both Low-/ middle- income countries and High- income countries, showing the substantial threats and challenges hindering the development of the early childhood sector as well as the urge to intervene. The commentary also pointed out the efforts and the progress done in the field that is laying the ground for encouraging initiatives and improvements especially in the light of ECD data collection, measurements, and monitoring becoming mainstreamed.

Read the article on ANECD’s website, here


ECD Arab Country Profiles in Arabic

Before the Corona Pandemic, the Arab Network for Early Childhood Development had translated into Arabic the 2019 ECD country profiles for the fourteen Arab countries, Algeria, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen. The profiles show data on key indicators of early childhood development specifically, on the five components of the nurturing care

framework which are: health, nutrition, early learning, responsive caregiving, and security and safety, nested within an enabling policy framework to support families and caregivers.

ANECD also translated the Brochure that summarizes the project and a table showing the indicators used, the rationale behind including them, their definition and the data source.

Moreover, the Arab Network will work on translating the new updated profiles for the Arab countries and share them on its platforms.

Check the 2019 study and the translated profiles on ANECD website here