IECD chief takes part in closing conference of high-level early childhood project |04 April 2022
‘Building resilient and sustainable Early Childhood Care and Education systems’
The chief executive of the Institute for Early Childhood Development (IECD), Shirley Choppy, was invited to take part in the closing conference of the project titled ‘Building resilient and sustainable Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) systems’.
This took place last week in Dubai, UAE, following the fruitful collaboration between the Unesco International Bureau of Education (Unesco-IBE) and the IECD.
The conference aimed to establish links between ECCE policies, their dynamics and implementation within an equitable, quality and innovative educational ecosystem, exchange knowledge by sharing best practices, and discuss perspectives.
Mrs Choppy’s presence has contributed to collective and robust advocacy in support of policies enabling quality ECCE and enhancing children’s wellbeing from the very early years.
The high-level conference, co-convened by Dubai Cares and IBE-Unesco, was held at the Dubai Cares Pavilion in Expo 2020, and was attended by ministers, experts in ECCE and curriculum, civil society representatives and senior officials from a few countries involved in the above project, namely Eswatini, Lao PDR and Cameroon.
Seychelles was part of this initiative and provided technical assistance in ECCE to its counterpart, Cameroon.
The IBE-Unesco and Cameroon expressed their gratitude and appreciation to Seychelles IECD for its technical leadership role, support and guidance in this endeavour.
These participating countries were officially presented with ECCE toolkit by the IBE-Unesco to provide concrete support and assistance to policymakers, professionals and inspectors in formulating and implementing an effective ECCE system.
To support the 2030 Agenda for Education, Unesco-IBE and Dubai Care joined forces in 2017 to ensure quality and holistic ECCE by promoting an operational, multi-sectoral and integrated system in each of these countries.
This partnership aims to strengthen the capacity of member states to develop, implement and maintain resilient and sustainable ECCE systems to give children a good start in life and provide them with the opportunity to develop holistically.
Dr Tariq Al Gurg, chief executive and vice-chairman of Dubai Cares, said: “Providing quality ECCE plays a key role in effective lifelong learning. Enhancing ECCE cannot be achieved without resilient and sustainable ECCE systems. Therefore, collaboration between global stakeholders is vital to the long-term sustainability and success of high-quality ECCE services to accelerate the scale-up of policies to the overall share of budgetary allocations. Early childhood development has always been one of the priorities for Dubai Cares.”
During this conference, Mrs Choppy met with the programme manager of Dubai Cares to explore collaboration and initiatives relating to ECCE, in its capacity as a new Category 2 Centre for ECCE under the auspices of Unesco, as well as opportunities for staff training and development.
She also accepted an invitation from an organisation responsible for ECCE in Australia to collaborate on an innovative project that promotes play and knowledge sharing, meaningfully influencing the wellbeing and holistic development of young children, and fostering quality ECCE in the early years.
Finally, the CEO of IECD met with the director for Policies and Lifelong Learning Systems at Unesco to discuss the upcoming World Conference on ECCE and the leading role of IECD as a Category 2 Centre for ECCE. This conference will further increase the visibility of Seychelles, and IECD on a regional and international level.
On behalf of the Ministry of Education and the Institute, Mrs Choppy thanked the IBE-Unesco for this great opportunity to partake in the project and successful outcome of the conference. She also wished all the countries involved in the project much success in implementing their newly resilient ECCE system and expressed her desire to continue with this partnership with IECD for the benefit of the children on the continent.
The accompanying photographs show some highlights of the closing conference.
Text and photos contributed
