The WHO South-East Asia Regional Office in collaboration with UNICEF organized a 3-day virtual meeting from 27 to 29 April, 2021. The meeting brought together over 100 participants from WHO-SEAR countries (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Indonesia, Maldives, Nepal, Sri Lanka , Thailand and Timor-Leste) and two countries from UNICEF-ROSA (Afghanistan Pakistan). Participants included government delegates from relevant ministries (health, nutrition, education, child protection, women and child affairs), WHO and UNICEF staff and partners.
On Day 1, participants reflected on progress to date with promoting nurturing care for ECD in the region. They were oriented to Strategic action 1 of the Nurturing Care Framework, Lead and invest, specifically actions, challenges and opportunities with respect to undertaking this strategic action.
On Day 2, participants explored Strategic actions 2 and 3 of the Nurturing Care Framework, Focus on families and communities and Strengthen services. Global and country presentations provided a framework to explore these areas for further action across the region. Spotlight was on perinatal mental health and wellbeing as an important determinant for child development and on scalability pathway for service delivery for nurturing care.
On Day 3, participants were taken through the Country profiles for ECD, the Early Childhood Development Index (ECDI) 2030 and the forthcoming Global Scale for Early Childhood Development (GSED) to illustrate mechanisms for monitoring provision of nurturing care. Representatives of Partner organisations shared their ideas for collaboration and contribution to promoting nurturing care in the region. Finally, country teams prepared action plans to strengthen programmes for nurturing care and identified priority actions for the next 12 to 18 months at national levels.
Find background materials, recaps, presentations, and recordings at the link above.