Early Childhood Development (ECD)

Meena Cabral de Mello
GFMER Coordinator of Early Childhood Development

Early child development is recognized as a critical component of children’s well-being, and is vital for their long term health, learning, behavior, coping and productivity, particularly for disadvantaged children. Poverty, poor health, undernutrition and lack of early stimulation can undermine children’s brain development during the first three years when it is most sensitive to the influences of the external environment. As a result, it is estimated that more than 200 million children under five are at extreme risk of impaired cognitive and social-emotional development. Many are likely to do poorly in school and subsequently as adults will have low incomes, high fertility, and provide poor health care, nutrition, and stimulation to their own children, thus contributing to the intergenerational transmission of disadvantage. This loss of human potential is associated with more than a 20% deficit in adult income and has implications for national development.

Effective interventions to promote child development exist that prevent or ameliorate against loss of developmental potential, but programme coverage is very low in the developing countries. There are relatively few investments made by governments in young children - particularly during the prenatal period through the first three years of life - and families are often not prepared, or not aware, of the critical role they can play in protecting and stimulating early psychosocial development. In the recent past, evidence about simple though effective interventions that families and care givers could use in all contexts to promote early development has become available. The recommendations of such interventions are derived from a number of overlapping approaches which have a synergistic effect on growth, cognitive and socio-emotional development, and which enhance the capacity of the mother/caregiver to carry out responsive care giving behaviours. If implemented on a wide-scale such interventions will have significant public health and social benefits, especially for the most disadvantaged children and families.

The health sector has a unique role to play in ensuring each child has the opportunity not only to survive but also to thrive. Countries are encouraged to incorporate promotive and preventative care for early child development into the primary health care sector, with outreach to families.

In order to assist in the uptake and scalability of ECD interventions with special reference to developing countries, GFMER in collaboration with partners, proposes to develop and launch a set of eLearning tools on ECD including an online training course for programme managers and health workers. It will thus take advantage of the many benefits of innovative learning technologies to transfer ECD knowledge and skills through out-of-classroom and in-classroom education using various technology platforms, from CD-ROMs and computer-based instruction to videoconferencing and virtual educational networks.

The aim is to contribute in building ECD capacity in countries by allowing participation of those health care professionals whose access to learning is limited by lack of training opportunity, time, financial resources or other constraints. The course will be proposed for in-service and basic training of health workers allowing for learner-directed and self-paced instruction. Mobile learning applications - which a learner can access remotely from anywhere using a hand-held or mobile device such as smart phones, mobile phones, and tablets - will also be developed. A systematic process will be used for the participation of health professionals through country teams.

Meena Cabral de Mello
GFMER Coordinator of Early Childhood Development

Documents

The Team

Early Childhood Development (ECD)