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Arab Region
Arab Resource Collective (ARC) is a regional, independent non-profit organisation founded in 1988. ARC works with partners in several Arab countries, including Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, Jordan, Yemen, Egypt, and Sudan. ARC’s mission is to build on the capacities of each person and on people’s experience to develop knowledge and translate rights into reality. It embraces a holistic and integrated approach to development, as well as practices collaborative work through consultation, networking, and partnerships.
ARC’s objective is to produce resources, build capacities, and nurture the resource culture in Arab countries. Working with partners, ARC contributes to better childhood, health, education, communication, and community development by producing reference books (such as the Arabic edition of “Where There is No Doctor”), training manuals, newsletters, and other educational materials, as well as by convening workshops and training programmes to build human resources.
ARC’s programmes include:
• Early childhood care and development (this programme is the largest single programme in ARC)
• Children’s rights
• The child-to-child approach
• Mental health for a new generation
• Youth and healthy living
• Disability, special needs, and inclusion
• Health for all through primary health care, women’s health, and rational use of drugs
• Digital solidarity with deprived communities
• Information and communication technologies for development
• Training, learning, and communications The Early Childhood Care and Development
ARC facilitates collective work among partner NGOs as a means of advocacy. The major focus of such work is on the production and dissemination of knowledge in the form of approaches, resources, and capacity building. This applies also to the field of advocacy for ECCD. Though sociopolitical structures in the region are varied, they are generally characterised by distance between governments/states and citizens, or what could be broadly termed “civil society” (e.g., Higher Councils for Motherhood and Childhood [HCMC]). International instruments have also provided some leverage for NGOs to reclaim the advocacy ground (e.g., The Convention on the Rights of the Child [CRC]). The Education for All (EFA) process, with its insistence on the elaboration of national policies, is another point of entry. Another positive development generated partly by the dynamics of the CRC reporting system has been the emergence of NGO coalitions for the rights of the child. These coalitions have been able to garner support for raising awareness and lobbying.
Programmes for young children in the Arab region relate to the Consultative Group’s 4 Cornerstones to Secure a Strong Foundation for Young Children:
• Cornerstone 1-- Cooperation between ECCD and health professionals is only now emerging as a point of entry. One illustration would be one of the outcomes of the 2006 Early Childhood Virtual University (ECDVU.org) programme in Yemen; at the end of the seminar on leadership and programming, the participants in the course invited the Ministers of Social Affairs and Health and lobbied them to ensure integration from the early years.
• Cornerstone 2-- Enrolment in kindergarten is a current focus of most governments and societies in the region, driven by a variety of factors (e.g., conviction, EFA requirements, external funding). An example is the project adopted by the current two World Forum Global Leaders in Egypt (from Save the Children US), who focused on mobilising resources and adopting appropriate approaches for increasing enrolment in one rural district. Community initiatives have been emerging to provide some forms of structured programming to prepare children for the transition from home to basic education. An illustration of this type of community initiative is the project of a learner in the ECDVU course in Yemen, who implemented such a project in her village during the summer break.
• Cornerstone 3-- ECCD actors within Palestinian refugee camps, which generally are NGOs in Lebanon and elsewhere, have developed highly successful ECCD provision. Cooperation has been gradually emerging with the schools run by United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which is the UN agency mandated to provide support services, including education, to Palestinian refugees.
• Cornerstone 4-- Work on national policies has received an active boost in many Arab countries in recent years, thanks to the external leverage mentioned above (i.e., EFA, CRC). For example, a national policy has been adopted in Jordan, and the process has been going on for some time in Egypt, Syria, and Yemen.
Conflicts and upheavals have always existed in the region, but the situation is now one of permanent emergency in Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon, and Sudan, and the potential for a worsening of the situation is on everyone’s minds. This state of emergency goes far beyond occasional suspension of normal services. On the one hand, it is producing a chronic degradation of the real progress made in years past. On the other, it requires the allocation of limited energies and resources to cope with the consequences. ARC have started thinking of the need to introduce strategies to meet the needs of the young children and families affected as integral component of our mainline programming.
For more information, contact:
Maysoun Chehab, ECCD Program Coordinator
Arab Resource Collective
E-mail: ecd@mawared.org
http://www.mawared.org/
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