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Impact of CG Work
This section is currently being revised.
The Impact of CG Work
ECCD has become an official part of national and international agendas. Attention to young children and their families is now considered by many policymakers and donors to be the place to start in development work. When the CG was formed, only a few isolated individuals within donor organizations saw the importance of focusing on young children. ECCD is now included within the official mandate of many key donor organizations, international NGOs, and foundations.
More major donor organizations have hired staff whose main task and expertise is to create ECCD programming. ECCD programming is no longer left to the chance interests of an education or health specialist. There has been extensive purposeful hiring of staff to promote ECCD programming and also promote particular attention to young children within all the broader programming of these institutions.
Investment in ECCD has increased exponentially. Along with this greater rhetorical commitment to young children, there has come a greater financial investment. The World Bank and IDB now speak in terms of investing hundreds of millions of dollars in ECCD programming. Governments, too, are recognizing the value of supporting their youngest children as a long-term investment strategy.br>
Longitudinal research projects have yielded powerful evidence of the financial, educational, physical and social benefits of quality ECCD programming. Many of these studies were funded or supported by CG participants.
At the first World Conference on Education for All, the CG consortium lobbied -- along with others -- to ensure that the fundamental concept ""Learning Begins at Birth"" was taken on board and integrated into the overall Jomtien agreement. . ECCD is now considered one of the four pillars of ""basic"" learning. This understanding has influenced the planning of many individual countries as well as the large organizations which support development internationally.
In Amman, Jordan, the Consultative Group reinforced this message with that of ""Eight is Too Late"". In preparation for Dakar, some of our partners (agency and regional participants) attended and provided inputs into some of regional meetings that led up to the conference in April, and Robert G. Myers (a member of the Secretariat) undertook on behalf of the CG a review of the decade in relation to ECD for the Dakar conference. In addition, the Consultative Group organised a Strategy Session on Early Childhood Development in Dakar highlighting key issues and challenges for the future. Finally, members from the Consultative Group on ECCD participated on the EFA Steering Committee over the last number of years.
At our annual meeting (May 2000), we agreed collectively that regional participants and member organisations would continue to look for appropriate opportunities for ongoing participation and active engagement in the proposed follow-up to Dakar. Through this we aim to ensure ongoing awareness raising of ECD and its ability to contribute towards the overall EFA process (e.g. it enhances children’s early development, it can increase the efficiency of basic education, it complements and supports other goals such as increasing girls’ education and women’s literacy). We will also continue on with our other joint work, dissemination activities and policy advocacy.
Many governments, education ministries, and regional bodies now have ECCD policies and the will to support young children and families. Donor agencies are receiving more and more requests for technical assistance in establishing ECCD policies and programming within countries' larger social and educational development plans.
There has been a proliferation of programs addressing the needs of young children and their families. Interest in young children has arisen from both grassroots efforts of communities as well as from the level of NGOs and development agencies, and there is now extensive experience available to support development of diverse high quality, cost efficient programming strategies.
ECCD has been established as a ""field"" and has advanced significantly through the efforts of the CG. Through Robert Myers' landmark book, The Twelve Who Survive, as well as through other efforts of the CG participants and Secretariat, there is now extensive shared understanding of the holistic nature of early childhood development, and the necessity of integrated programming to support the child within the family, institutional, and community context.
The joint efforts of the CG consortium have contributed significantly to common understanding of young children and what they need. Among policy planners, decision-makers and even the public, the pre-school aged children are no longer invisible. Their developmental needs are no longer considered exclusively from a health and nutrition standpoint.
The CG has collaboratively defined and refined appropriate programming models and complementary strategies for supporting young children and their families in diverse circumstances. This knowledge allows individual NGOs and countries to understand more clearly the ramifications of various efforts and choices, and to plan more effective programming to support young children and families.
There has been extensive use of CG materials in the creation of individual organizational policies and practices.
There is increasing collaboration, partnering and sharing of resources among donor organizations and between funders and NGOs. The habit of ""sitting at the table together"" through the CG mechanism has created relationships between organizations that has spilled over into concrete collaborations on projects and initiatives. From these initiatives, valuable materials, expertise, and greater capacity for programming have emerged.
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