PAKISTAN ALLIANCE FOR EARLY CHILDHOOD |
Volume 9|October- December, 2020 |
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PAFEC reaches out to Public Universities and Colleges to Upskill ECD/ECCE Workforce |
As part of its mandate, PAFEC has started working extensively with public and private universities and teacher education colleges to review and update existing courses of ECD/ECCE, design new courses and enhance the capacity of relevant faculty to offer these courses. In this regard, we have formally started working with six public universities and two teacher training colleges. More universities and colleges will be added to this partnership in the weeks to come. The faculty members of the partner institutions are working closely with the technical expert from PAFEC to review existing courses, identify gapes and develop new diploma and degree level courses. Capacity building efforts are also in progress to improve relevance, application of new, research based knowledge and methods of instruction and assessment. To this end, PAFEC organised a webinar for the faculty and students of the Fatima Jinnah Women University and a seminar for the faculty of the Federal College of Education. These sessions were well received and deemed as relevant and useful by the faculty and management of both the partner institutions. The title of the webinar/ seminar sessions was “Positive Parenting in ECD/ECCE” for which PAFEC had engaged Ms. Shafia Rafique, CEO/Principal at Little Fellow Daycare & Elementary School. A large number of participants (faculty and students) attended the events. The key areas which were covered in these sessions included the following:
- What is Early Childhood Development
- Developmental Domains
- Contributors of Early Child Development
- Nurturing Care Framework
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What is Parenting
- Different Parenting Styles
- Positive Parenting
- Key Principles of Positive Parenting
The presentations by the resource person were followed by detailed discussions and maximum participants participated in the presentations by asking questions, sharing their knowledge & experience and generating discussions which provided an opportunity to them for learning more about the topic.
Glimpses of the Partnership with Universities & Colleges
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MoU Signing with Fatima Jinnah Women University, Rawalpindi |
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Partnership with Abdul Wali Khan University, Mardan |
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Capacity Building Workshop for the Faculty of Federal College of Education |
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PAFEC joins Shirakat – Partnership for Development, to Reduce Prevalence of Early and Forced Marriages |
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PAFEC joined hands with Shirakat - Partnership for Development, to organise the South Asian Virtual-Conference on Prevention of Forced and early Marriages during and post COVID-19COFEM – 2020. The title of the conference was, Deepening the Dialogue: Strategies for Working with Men and Boys for Prevention of Child Early and Forced Marriages in the context of COVID-19. A series of online meetings of the organising committee held prior to the conference to complete the preparations for it.
CEO, PAFEC actively participated in the meetings and contributed to the development and execution of the conference plan. The format of conference consisted of talk shows on television and webinars from the 2nd to 12th October, 2020. The following topics were covered during these events: Early and Forced Marriages in South Asia, Implications of Economic Recession Post COVID-19 and Impact on Early and Forced Marriages, Impact of CEFM on Reproductive Health of Young People in the times of the Pandemic, Policy Advocacy Initiatives in South Asia to deal with CEFM during Humanitarian Crisis and Response Efforts, Strategies to Curtail CEFM during and Post Humanitarian Crisis. Ms. Khadija Khan, CEO, PAFEC, participated as a guest speaker in the first show of this special series on HUM News in Subh se Agay on Early and Forced Marriages in South Asia. The recording of the programme can be accessed in the following link:
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PAFEC Participates in the UNICEF Radio Programme on Early Childhood Development |
UNICEF Pakistan in collaboration with Broadcasting Corporation (PBC), broadcasted weekly shows, from 1st
July to 31st December 2020, on ECD and its related topics amidst COVIID-19. The objectives of the programme were to promote messages and behaviors on prevention, precaution and issues emerging based on the existing practices and behaviors. The topics covered in the programme provided action-oriented information to public, especially to parents, caregivers, teachers and community influencers across the country. CEO, PAFEC and its members participated in five of the episodes. Details of these episodes can be accessed in the following links:
Key messages highlighted in these episodes included:
- Learn about the developmental needs of your child/children and respond to their needs timely and adequately
- Recognise your child/children’s potential and provide them with early stimulating and learning activities. Listen to them, sign to them and read to them!
- Talk to your children, ask them questions, let them ask you questions and answer their questions patiently. Questioning stimulates cognitive & affective domains!
- Respect your children, do not ridicule and criticize them. Encouragement and Positive Discipline help responsible behaviour!
- Develop a daily family routine – involve everyone in the family to develop a flexible and diverse routine to adopt and learn in the new situation – this will take time to implement, routine for working from home, online classes, menu etc
- Assign responsibilities to every ne in the family – help your children prepare a responsibility chart for chores such as making bed, cleaning, cooking, washing, doing groceries etc
- Family Time – allocate time daily to talk to your children(meal time is best for this activity), help them to be thankful for being at home safely with each other, switch all digital devices at this time, share authentic information about COVID-19 with your children and tell them what they need to do to stay safe, let them ask questions, help them understand as to why their schools are closed, encourage them to find ways to help needy and poor, share examples of voluntary work being done especially these days, share personal goals and ambitions
- Engaging Learning Activities: prepare a learning area first, plan and do activities with your children other than their syllabus e.g. experience sharing(encourage children to share their experience), reading and telling story, watching movie together, limiting screen time, role playing , playing music, singing songs together, doing art work, developing learning material, playing games , kitchen gardening, doing projects, it is ok to learn from your children, ask them to become your teachers, notice changing behavior REMEMBER PARENTS ARE ROLE MODELS!
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PAFEC’s Engagement in the Development of Multi-sector ECD Policy Framework |
PAFEC has been collaborating with SUN Secretariat, Nutrition Section, Ministry of Planning, and Development & Reform to develop an ECD Policy Framework for the last two years. The ‘Ministry’ recently formed a National Technical Steering Committee and a Working Group and Ms. Khadija Khan, CEO PAFEC has been appointed on both these committees as a member. First meeting of the committee, titled as Integrated Early Childhood Development (ECD): From Policy to Programming held on 16, November, 2020. The meeting focused on ECD landscape in the country and discussed the way forward. The meeting was chaired by Dr. Jalil, Member Food Security and Climate Change (FS&CC).
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PAFEC’s Engagement with the National Curriculum Council |
PAFEC has been working with the National Curriculum Council for the last four years in the development and updating of the National Curriculum for Early Childhood Care & Education. After the completion of the Curriculum, the current government decided to develop model text-books from pre-1 to grade 5. CEO, PAFEC was appointed as a focal person for reviewing the model books being developed by a group of authors for the pre-primary grade (age 4 to 5 children).
The review process included series of workshops for the authors on the new Curriculum and on the guidelines for developing the books. After receiving detailed feedback from the reviewers, the authors started developing the content and materials and presented the same to the reviewers in a series of workshops. The review team thoroughly reviewed each and every single content, checking its alignment with the competencies given in the Curriculum under the different learning areas. The text-book developers presented their draft content and other materials to the review team which were thoroughly reviewed aligning them with the competencies given in the Curriculum under the different areas. Detailed feedback was given to the authors along with written guidelines to improve the quality of the books aligning them with the curriculum document. The books are now in its final shape after five months hard work.
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Building Awareness to fight and stop the spread of COVID-19 |
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PAFEC, in collaboration with UNICEF, has designed a three-month camping to fight COVID-19. The campaign will be launched from 1st January, 2021 in four districts of Punjab, i.e. Lahore, Faisalabad, Multan and Gujranwala with some institutional members of PAFEC.
Goal of the Campaign
The overall goal of the campaign is to create awareness about COVID-19 to stop the community spread of the virus.
Objectives of the Campaign
- Reduce the spread of COVID-19, through preventive measures
- Build capacity of communities through sensitizing them using different strategies
- Create preparedness among communities to deal with virus in case of being infected and to mitigation the situation
- Provide necessary health and hygiene guidelines information and identify services available for this purpose
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Best Practice
ECE COVID-19 initiatives for Early Years Learning to address the learning crisis in Pakistan due to the COVID-19 lockdown
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Idara-i-Taleem-o-Aaghahi (ITA) promptly developed learning solutions to address the various needs of the community. ITA schools and ECE centers are situated in outskirts of rural areas of Pakistan, which demands adapted interventions tailored for each community’s needs. COVID-19 is the fifth Emergency for ITA since 2005. A week prior to the Lockdown on March 15th, 2020, the team sat down to discuss what needs to be done if schools shut down for 2 months or more. This included our various service delivery flagship and research programs for different age groups. Working with children in early years is challenging as their educational and learning needs are more personalized.
Hence, there was an absence of an immediate learning response by government for early childhood learning during COVID-19 lockdown. During this school closure time, tech enabled learning in classes (before Covid-19) helped in optimizing education through digital ways during lockdown. To address their learning needs, online pedagogical methods were deployed in close proximity along with video/WhatsApp/ worksheets. To fulfill the early years learning needs, ITA started the learning initiatives in phases.
In the E-Learning initiative, short SLOs based educational video clip/links where shared on WhatsApp with parents. The parents were guided with audio messages or group messages on how to conduct the same activity with their children at home. This was designed to achieve the National Curriculum based simple SLOs of numeracy, literacy and world around us concepts. This initiative was done in the communities where digital technologies were accessible. To reach the outskirt communities and the ensuring the quality of remote learning, ITA program team worked on systematic division of home based learning for ECE o Grade 5 children through play based and child centred learning approaches by developing Bingo Cards—a fun based task sheet which consist of activities for children to do at home with the help of their parents/elder siblings. Bingo Cards tasks were designed to achieve age-based competencies and all tasks were in alignment with grade wise National Curriculum and work which children can do individually at home.
Another initiative ITA undertook was to develop the ECE safe spaces called Sanjha Vehras “Our Courtyards”. Sanjha Vehra is conducted in a physically open space ensuing the COVID-19 SOPS are followed. Each SV includes 8-10 children per shift for 60-90 minutes in different in villages. Community engagement was key element at the SV and community members were engaged to deliver session on health & hygiene and COVID-19 SOPS and awareness. ITA teachers and volunteers conducted ECE sessions with children which includes learning activities through circle time, learning centres (goshay) and free time to explore world around us concepts.
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PAKISTAN ALLIANCE FOR EARLY CHILDHOOD (PAFEC) |
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