PAKISTAN ALLIANCE FOR EARLY CHILDHOOD (PAFEC)
Volume 06 January-April, 2020
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PAFEC keeps sharing research-based knowledge and best practices in ECD from around the world with its members through different platforms. During the lockdown and PAFEC is actively sharing COVID-19 related information and resources with the ‘Alliance’ s members and a large number of members are benefiting from it. PAFEC also provides capacity building opportunities through engaging members in experience sharing/peer learning activities, technical workshops, seminars, conferences and webinars. Link of the webinar is:
In this connection, PAFEC in partnership with Rupani Foundation has recently initiated webinars on
Childhood Matters,
engaging experts in this field.On the left side of the table are the details of the webinars taken place so far.Link of the webinar is:
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Pakistan Alliance for Early Childhood (PAFEC) signed an agreement with UNICEF on 30th January 2020 to implement a project titled ‘Transforming the Society of Pakistan through Early Childhood Development and Informed Parenting’. The project aims at improving and updating traditional parenting practices in Pakistan through piloting UNICEF’s Parental Package for ECD—Key Family Care Practices, and other related technical packages available with UNICEF and its strategic partners.
The project design has been inspired by the notion that awareness of ECD and promotion of Key Family Care Practices are central to transforming the society and to ensuring long term positive outcomes for the future generations. The project also reflects UNICEF and PAFEC’s strategic partnership and the latter’s commitment to involve various partners and broader communities, including parents, caregivers, service providers and professionals in the due process.
PAFEC is using the resources and technical support provided by UNICEF to strengthen professional, institutional and outreach capacity of 20 implementing partners. Under this collaborative project, a minimum of 50 master trainers will be trained on the Key Family Care Practices and ECD parental package, who will further train at least 750 frontline educators. At the grassroots level, the frontline educators will establish contacts and educate 15,000 parents and caregivers, 100 community influencers and 200 youth leaders to promote adherence to ECD knowledge and Key Family Care Practices, eventually benefiting around 30,000 children of 0 to 8 years of age.
As per the design, PAFEC is piloting this project in the Rawalpindi and Islamabad region through selecting 20 of its institutional members working in the Early Childhood Development sector. Based on the learning from the pilot phase of the project, a multi-year/agency programme will be developed for scaling the tested programme in the whole country.Following are the highlights of the PAFEC activities during the review period.
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Inception Workshop: Pakistan Alliance for Early Childhood conducted an Inception Workshop on February 19, 2020 at Islamabad Hotel to pilot the project, ‘Key Family Practices – Parental Package for ECD’ funded by UNICEF. The project is being piloted in Rawalpindi and Islamabad regions over a six-month period through 20 relevant implementing partners managed by PAFEC. A total of 24 individuals representing implementing partners attended the workshop.
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Selection of Master Trainers and Training of Trainers: After the inception workshop, PAFEC started collaborating with implementing partners to work on the next steps on the project work plan that was to identify potential master trainers and conduct a three-day Training of Trainers (ToT)s. Each partner was assigned to identify master trainer(s) to be trained by the technical team of UNICEF and PAFEC. The training workshop was held from 25 to 27 February, to train the master trainers on Key Family Care Practices. Trainers from UNICEF (Dr. Relindis Yovsi and Zohra Hunzai) and Ms. Khadija Khan from PAFEC conducted the training sessions for at least 54 participants coming from 20 implementing partners. Out of the 54 enrolled for the training, 51 of them attended 100% sessions and 4 of them attended
partially. The PAFEC team facilitated the training sessions alongside the UNICEF team.
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Follow-up meetings: Followed by the Inception Workshop and the three-day Training of Trainers, PAFEC successfully concluded meetings and consultations with all the 20 implementing partners, explaining the implementation steps, including the project targets, budget flow, reporting, monitoring & evaluation framework, project flow chart of
Key Family Care Practices –
Parental Package for ECD. Implementing partners had started training of Frontline Educators from Monday 16th March, 2020. However, due to the lockdown in the country because of the outbreak of COVID-19, the partners had to change their strategy and out of the 20implementing partners 12 shifted their activities online and they are successfully imparting the training of Frontline Educators online.
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Ms. Hooria Sardarzada, General Director for Child 👶 🧒 Care (Kindergartens) Afghanistan visited PAFEC Office in Islamabad to explore how PAFEC works to promote ECD in Pakistan and to discuss the ways in which PAFEC can extend support to set up a similar network in Afghanistan. CEO, PAFEC gave her a detailed brieing about PAFEC including its legal structure, mandate, strategy and initiatives taken so far. Ms. Hooria was very happy to know all this and expressed her desire to work with PAFEC to set up a similar network in Afghanistan.
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PAFEC in collaboration with the Ministry of Planning, Development & Reform, SUN Secretariat, Nutrition Section, and Pakistan Alliance for Early Childhood (PAFEC) organised a Focus Group Discussion (FGD) on ECD Policy & Framework. ECD experts from different sectors including education, health, nutrition, child protection and inclusive education participated in the FGD. The FGDs is part of the consultation & stakeholders’ engagement in the development of Multi-sectoral ECD Policy Framework led by the Ministry.
The aim of the consultation was to gain a better understanding of ECD & systems which are locally relevant & responsive.The discussion was facilitated by Dr. Relindis Yovsi the Early Childhood Development Consultant at UNICEF, Islamabad Pakistan
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Ms. Khadija Khan, CEO, Pakistan Alliance for Early Childhood (PAFEC) was invited by POWER 99, a private radio channel to talk about new ways of learning and teaching during the time of crisis. She talked about the current situation created by the pandemic and suggested some key steps and strategies to parents for engaging children in learning at home.
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PAFEC | www.pafec.org ]
Pakistan Alliance for Early Childhood, Office 4C, Plot 29, Old USAID Plaza, Block A, A.K.M Fazal-Haq-Road, Blue Area, Islamabad
Ph: 051-8730495, Cell: 0308-8820393
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