Children’s House: ECD by The Consultative Group

Welcome to the Children’s House ECD Room of
The Consultative Group on Early Childhood Care and Development

Mandate

The Consultative Group on Early Childhood Care and Development, is a diverse consortium of agencies, donors, NGOs and foundations that links with regional-based Early Childhood Care and Development networks comprising individuals and organisations involved in programming, research, policy-advocacy, monitoring and evaluation for young children (0-8) at risk in the Majority World. The term Majority World refers to those countries that are often referred to as South countries, developing or third world countries and serves to remind us that the majority of the world’ s children are at risk of delayed or debilitated development.

The Secretariat – in partnership with the other members of the consortium and regional networks – works actively to identify gaps, critical issues and emerging areas of need and interest related to ECCD for its work in awareness-raising, advocacy, and dissemination, and to seek out new partners. Please read about us and visit our Website to take advantage of the extensive resources found there.

Proposed activities include to continue to:

• Synthesise, critically review and then share – in different forms – the lessons, findings, and impact from practice and research across regions
• Continue to strengthen regional networking, capacity-building, outreach and activities
• Strengthen and/or establish more effective links with others working in health, social welfare, community development, adult literacy and basic education.

We believe it is critical to promote a more diverse and creative range of ECCD activities that link different sectors, are more inclusive, and to better address children’s needs and circumstances in the context of the family and/or community.

Key Priorities in the next 5 years include:

• Ongoing participation and active engagement in the proposed follow-up to Dakar to ensure ongoing awareness-raising of ECCD and its ability to contribute towards the overall EFA process
• Development and use of indicators related to ECCD
• HIV/AIDS and the impact on children, families, other caregivers
• Early literacy and family literacy efforts
• Conflict and post-conflict situations and the impact on young children and families
• Street Children and other children living in difficult circumstances
• 0-3 year olds: their care and development, child rearing practices, early brain development
• The Children’s Rights Convention: issues and follow-up for young children
  Training and Capacity Building of ECCD practitioners, programmers, researchers, organisations and policy makers
• Quality delivery in ECCD
• Sustainability (of programmes, local ECCD organisations)

For areas such as HIV/AIDs, the development of appropriate and relevant indicators for ECCD and Developing ECCD Leadership, the CG plans to review current practice and understanding and/or carry out new piloting and action research on particular topics with the leadership and involvement of some of our donor and regional partners.

Please note that we are not a grant-making body and regret that we are unable to provide grants, scholarships, bursaries etc. to organisations.