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The characteristics of the local area in which children live have a fundamental influence on their daily lives. Growing up in an area that is ‘on the margins’ threatens children’s rights, well-being and development. A lack of local services and resources is a form of poverty that all children and young people in the area experience, irrespective of their family circumstances, and this poverty shapes their lives in the present and in the future. For this reason, UNICEF Innocenti has initiated a new programme of research – MAPS (Monitoring and Analysing child Poverty across Space). As a pilot for this programme, it selected one of the internal areas of Italy – that is isolated areas characterized by low population density, depopulation and an ageing demographic. The report “Growing up in an inner area: The lives of children and adolescents living in inner Cilento” presents the results of this study. The research involved children and adolescents from 6 to 21 years old through a range of qualitative and quantitative methods, as well as parents of children aged 0-5, adults in the community and key informants. The results of the research reveal a complex picture. While some characteristics of the area positively influence children’s lives, others risk depriving them of the opportunities that they need when growing up. The recommendations emphasize the need for a collective awareness of the urgent need to promote the development of the area starting with the revival of communities. It is essential that there is greater investment in services for children and young people in order to guarantee community well-being and build a more promising future.

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Alessandro Carraro; Caterina Arciprete; Gwyther Rees
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Task Force 6: Accelerating SDGs: Exploring New Pathways to the 2030 Agenda The G20 aims to promote global cooperation, inclusive development, economic stability, and sustainable growth. This presents an opportunity to leverage its leadership to ensure foundational investments in gender-equitable family well-being globally. Family policies, such as childcare services and parental leave, can reduce poverty, promote decent jobs for women, support more equal intra-familial relationships, and secure child well-being and development outcomes, thereby benefitting societies and economies. To achieve this, family policies need to be designed in a gender-equitable way, and be integrated, coordinated, and financed through sustainable domestic resources. This policy brief proposes an agenda and recommendations to G20 countries to invest in gender-equitable family policies that can deliver optimally for child well-being, gender equality, and sustainable development.

AUTHOR(S)

Elena Camilletti; Ramya Subrahmanian; Dominic Richardson; A K Shiva Kumar; Rosario Esteinou; Lauren Whitehead
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Although many interventions aiming to improve quality, inclusion, and equity in education have been tested around the world, it is not always clear from the existing research base why they work, for whom they work, and what are the defining contextual circumstances under which they work. And while there is an increasingly robust body of evidence on 'what works', taking interventions to scale through government systems often requires multiple iterations to achieve fidelity and a full understanding of the wider ecosystem. Implementation research is concerned with why and how an intervention or reform works by considering the context, stakeholders, and process of implementation. This guidance note, developed by the Building Evidence in Education (BE2) Working Group, helps education stakeholders to design and oversee implementation research in order to answer questions and learn lessons about the contextual factors impacting the implementation of an intervention or reform in a particular government or implementer’s system.

Mainstreaming gender within pre-primary education is a priority in tackling gender-related inequalities from the early years. Such mainstreaming requires the commitment of a variety of stakeholders within the education system and beyond, including different units within education ministries, pre-service and in-service teacher training providers, teacher unions, other ministries, academia and civil society organizations. This brief presents key advocacy points and enabling conditions to support education ministries to engage these partners in the delivery of gender-transformative pre-primary education. Advocacy points are aligned with the five components of quality systems: planning and budgeting; curriculum development and implementation; workforce development; family and community engagement; and quality assurance.
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Access to pre-primary education has increased significantly in the past two decades and, as of today, boys and girls are participating equally. However, despite this gender parity in access, the pre-primary education system does not always deliver on its potential to tackle gender inequalities and address harmful gender stereotypes and norms. In particular, children begin to gain insight into certain cultural gender stereotypes as early as the ages of two and three. There is, therefore, a need to proactively incorporate gender-responsive and gender-transformative strategies into the design and implementation of pre-primary education systems to address gender inequalities.
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Children begin learning about gender stereotypes as early as age two. The pre-primary education system does not always deliver on its potential to tackle and address harmful gender stereotypes while they are being absorbed by the youngest learners. All components of the pre-primary system have a role to play in breaking down these stereotypes. This includes the teaching workforce, who play a crucial role in determining how the education system contributes to gender equality and whose actions can influence children’s learning experiences and their personal gendered views and behaviour. This brief highlights key strategies and considerations to ensure the pre-primary workforce can be prepared to stop gender stereotypes from being perpetuated, and ways they can create a learning environment that is gender-transformative.
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Children begin learning about gender stereotypes as early as age two. The pre-primary education system does not always deliver on its potential to tackle and address harmful gender stereotypes while they are being absorbed by the youngest learners. All components of the pre-primary system have a role to play in breaking down these stereotypes. This includes parents, who are the primary agents of gender socialization for their children. As young children are in the process of forming their own gender identity, their primary caregivers can reinforce their behaviors and act as role models on how to behave and interact with others. This brief highlights key strategies and considerations to ensure family and community members are active agents of change for gender-transformative education and development.
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Gender-transformative pre-primary education requires a coherent system that integrates gender considerations across all its core components for a quality service delivery. This brief presents a set of tools to support policymakers and/or practitioners to progress towards gender-transformative pre-primary education policy and programming, organized by the five core components of quality pre-primary primary education systems: planning and budgeting; curriculum; workforce development; family and community engagement; and quality assurance. The tools provide key gender considerations to strengthen each core component and advocate for gender-responsive and gender-transformative policies and practices.
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UNICEF has undertaken hundreds of gender evidence generation activities, supporting programmatic action, advocacy work and policymaking. The Gender Solutions project aims to draw together the knowledge, innovations and impacts of gender evidence work conducted by UNICEF offices since the first UNICEF Gender Action Plan was launched in 2014. A desk review identified over 700 gender-related UNICEF research, evaluation and data evidence generation activities since 2014. Twenty-five outputs were shortlisted because of their high quality and (potential for) impact and three were selected as Gender Evidence Award winners by an external review panel. By capturing the impact of this broad body of work, Gender Solutions aims to showcase UNICEF’s evidence investments, reward excellence and inform the rollout of the UNICEF Gender Policy 2021–2030 and Action Plan 2022–2025.
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Sport is a powerful means by which to engage all children in activities for personal and social development and to help them achieve their full potential. From an early age, sport provides children – including the most marginalized – with the opportunity to develop their physical abilities and health, to socialize, to build leadership skills, to foster lifelong learning and to learn as well as to have fun. Furthermore, to engage in play and recreational activities is a child’s right: The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (art. 31.1) clearly establishes “the right of the child to … leisure, to engage in play and recreational activities appropriate to the age of the child…”. As first of its kind global study, this report aims to address the dearth of evidence on the implementation and impact of S4D policy and programming for children. To do this, the report assesses, systematizes and maps existing evidence on S4D policies and programmes through desk-based research. Quality counts, so each chapter first assesses the evidence for its conceptual coherence, methodological and analytical strength, relevance/generalizability to the S4D field at large, and ethical considerations, before discussing the main messages and recommendations to come out of the evidence. The key messages and main conclusions have also been developed by seeking programming information from S4D programming both within UNICEF, the Barça Foundation and around the world.
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41 items found