Displacement ruptures the social fabric of childhood, removing children from their communities and significantly increasing their risk to experience hunger, bullying and gender-based violence, as well as long-term hardship such as unemployment and depression. In many contexts education is one of the only systems of support that remains in their lives, making it crucial in developing the socio-emotional skills to navigate change and uncertainty.
The Whole Child Development for Displaced Learners Network recognizes the unique role education plays in the lives of refugee children and promotes the inclusion of psychosocial support and social and emotional learning in education programs for displaced learners. Established in October 2021, the network connects donors, intergovernmental agencies, governments and educators to create and sustain commitment to whole child development in contexts of conflicts and crisis.
13:00 to 14:30 CET - Assessment of Whole Child Development: Challenges and Solutions
In this session different stakeholders will share examples of how they are assessing Whole Child Development. They will explore challenges and solutions: What types of data are they collecting? What tools are they using? what are the gaps? Lessons learned? How do we ensure that we move beyond a sectoral focus.
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15:00 to 16:00 CET - Whole Child Development: Stakeholder Engagement
Stakeholder engagement is at the core of all programs and initiatives that are working with displaced learners and include the individual, their family, the community, civil society, and all levels of government in a balanced nature. In all cases, there should be the application of inclusiveness, cultural language and ethnic identity to address the whole child. If appropriate for sustainability, there should be effective monitoring and assessment. In order to address stakeholder engagement and resulting implementation, the approach should be global in nature and tailored to meet requirements at the local level. We offer the following questions to address the best approach to create an all-encompassing strategy: 1.) What is your role as a stakeholder? 2.) What are the guiding principles that stakeholders should follow (tools) 3.) In your experience, what has been hard to achieve (the obstacles, challenges?) 4.) What are the responsibilities to be an effective stakeholder (priorities. access, political will?)
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17:00 to 18:30 CET - Whole Child Development: Deciding What Works and Why
What works in terms of promoting whole child development in one context and for one group of children may not be effective elsewhere or with a different group. This session asks participants to consider what are the important factors when it comes to deciding what works? Through a series of question prompts, participants will be asked to reflect on sources of evidence that are relevant, meaningful, and useful; mechanisms for localizing resources; and how systems determine needs. As these discussions are likely to throw up common challenges, participants will be further asked to reflect their particular role in disrupting the status quo when it comes to the usual 'pitfalls'. This is an opportunity to listen to a diversity of actors within the education ecosystem and take these discussions out of this session and into our work.
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19:00 to 20:00 CET - Exploring Effective Advocacy Across the Education Ecosystem - What Works Best for Social and Emotional Learning (SEL)?
Our advocacy session will explore the question, "what does effective advocacy look like", by examining how advocacy efforts materialize across different levels of the education ecosystem. This will enable us to consider both, challenges and effective practices, when conducting advocacy on SEL from perspectives of ministry officials, donors, NGO staff, school officials, teachers and parents/caregivers. The presentation portion of our session will be conducted as an interview of various stakeholders (i.e. donor, NGO/government partner, school official, teacher, parent) with our Ministry of Education official. The discussion portion of our session will then divide participants into smaller groups, based on roles included in the interview. The smaller groups will be tasked with discussing challenges with SEL advocacy and also share promising practices to describe 'what works' for effective SEL advocacy, based on their group's perspective.
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