The Network, which was established to build strong partnerships across sectors and different disciplines, organisations, agencies and institutions in the Asia-Pacific region to advance the agenda on Early Childhood, is one of the most extensive and fastest growing networks for Early Childhood Development in the Asia-Pacific region.
This year’s conference was supported by UNICEF, UNESCO, the Open Society Foundations, Save the Children, Plan International and ChildFund International and incorporated multiple disciplines, including early childhood education, geography, governance and administration, health, nutrition and sanitation, and languages, culture and heritage.
Each of the sessions within the conference provided opportunities for students to engage with practitioners and policy makers in learning about and reporting on innovative approaches to overcoming some of these challenges at community, institutional and policy levels. The students who were chosen to attend the conference then wrote brief reports on conference sessions, as well as policy briefs and blogs for the Global Policy Journal, following discussions held at the conference.
The eight students who attended the conference from the University of Sheffield’s Faculty of Social Sciences were chosen because of their high achievements in their studies and showed a demonstrable interest in issues related to the physical and socio-cultural environment within which young children are raised.
You can read the policy briefs from the ARNEC Annual Conference below:
Ambient Air Pollution and Child Development: Giving Urban Design and Planning More Emphasis in Global Guidelines by Alex Clarke
How do we acknowledge and promote the lived realities in varied contexts across the Asia Pacific Region? by Beth Grice
How Can Regional Collaboration Foster Strong Policies on ECD by Megan Boyce
Equality from day one : The transformative power of ECCD to address gender inequality by Aisha Mahal
Working across sectors to promote nurturing and sustainable environments for young children by Matthew Rees