DELIVERING ECED IN EMERGENCIES EVIDENCE HUB
Evidence Hub on Delivering Early Childhood Education and Development (ECED) in Emergency Contexts. GSF aims to codify a set of practitioner-focused resources and develop them into repositories to support critical actors effectively deliver and scale ECED in emergencies
Context
Emergencies are becoming frequent and young children are at the forefront of the crises. More than 10 million infants and young children are caught in crisis and displacement. They lack the necessary support to rebuild resilience and reach their full potential.
Quality and integrated Early Childhood Education and Development (ECED) can help mitigate the harmful effects of trauma and displacement. However, grassroot organisations, that are the first point of contacts with children and caregivers find it challenging to effectively deliver ECED services. Some articulated gaps are (a) scarce evidence on promising locally led models, (b) shortage of user-friendly tools and resources suited for high-pressure and time-constraint environments, and (c) limited focus in existing resources with respect to strengthening practice and addressing context-based requirements.
About the Hub
GSF aims to launch an Evidence Hub to provide practical resources to support grassroot organisations working in emergencies improve their ECED services. The core pillars of the Evidence Hub are:
- Incorporating practitioner inputs and bringing their voice to the forefront
- Facilitating learning and strengthening practice by tapping into the wealth of knowledge that already exist within the GSF community, and by engaging with the wider ecosystem through an in-depth and rigorous consultation process
- Leveraging what already exists by focusing more on contextualizing/ codifying existing models and re-testing them in diverse in-country emergency contexts, while developing new resources only when necessary
- Increasing uptake of resources by working towards improving access for contextualized, codified and easy to use resources
Approach for developing the resources for the Hub
GSF will develop the Evidence by formalising three dedicated learning spaces:
- Pilots: GSF will support practitioners to contextualize existing promising program models to diverse local emergency contexts and support them with testing them out in the form of pilots.
- Communities of Practice: The main purpose will be to build stronger relationship amongst ECD practitioners working in emergencies, share knowledge/best practices amongst peers and adapt existing tools and resources to meet local needs.
- Technical Working Groups: GSF will anchor technical working groups where local practitioners can collaborate to build new resources based on shared interests or develop resources on gaps based on what researchers are recommending.