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Introduction and Overview¹

To examine the science, policy, and practice surrounding supporting family and community investments in young children globally and children in acute disruptions, the Forum on Investing in Young Children Globally held a workshop in partnership with the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, from July 27–29, 2015. The workshop examined topics related to supporting family and community investments in young children globally. Examples of types of investments included financial and human capital. The workshop also included discussions on how systems can better support children, families, and communities through acute disruptions such as the Ebola outbreak.² Over the course of the 3-day workshop, researchers, policy makers, program practitioners, funders, young influencers³ and other experts from 19 countries discussed how best to support family and community investments across areas of

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¹ The planning committee’s role was limited to planning the workshop. The workshop summary has been prepared by the rapporteur (with the assistance of Charlee Alexander, Kimber Bogard, and Carrie Vergel de Dios) as a factual account of what occurred at the workshop. Statements, recommendations, and opinions expressed are those of individual presenters and participants and are not necessarily endorsed or verified by the Institute of Medicine. They should not be construed as reflecting any group consensus.

² Acute disruption is defined in the objectives for the workshop as one of three types of emergencies: (1) human-induced disasters, (2) natural disasters, and (3) outbreaks.

³ In this context, young influencers are recognized as the dynamic, young, engaged group of researchers and implementers who work behind the scenes to support policy and practice for investing in young children globally. This community consists of support staff for policy makers and program implementers, young researchers at universities, and community

health, education, nutrition, social protection, and other service domains with additional sessions that addressed specific needs of children and their caregivers during acute disruptions. In his introductory remarks, Gary Darmstadt, Associate Dean for Maternal and Child Health, Department of Pediatrics at the Stanford University School of Medicine, noted Ethiopia is particularly well equipped to discuss family and community investments. Among the reasons he cited were the strong commitment to science through the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences and also the robust primary care system Ethiopia built, which includes a health extension platform to which Ethiopia’s achievement of Millennium Development Goal 4 (reduce child mortality) can be largely attributed. Despite this success, Darmstadt pointed out one of the challenges moving forward is to consider how the workshop could be a catalyst to influence Ethiopia’s primary care platform among those globally to take on interventions that particularly improve child development alongside child survival. Turning to children during times of emergencies, Darmstadt emphasized there are particular challenges, but also distinct opportunities, in settings of acute disruptions to move the child survival agenda forward by introducing interventions that optimize early childhood development.

While the financing and policy perspectives are central to understanding family and community investments, the Workshop Planning Committee deemed it equally important to create a space to lift up the voices and bring the community into the room. Various voices were captured across Ethiopia, Haiti, and Rwanda to articulate, in their own words, some of the challenges and solutions around family and community investments in their young children. In particular, the voice of the young influencers captured the return on investment families and communities are making in this next generation, where the aspirations of this generation articulate intentions to address the needs of future children in their capacity as future professionals and leaders.

Amina Abubakar, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Center for Geographic Medicine, KEMRI Wellcome Trust Research Labs, framed the role of families and communities in investing in young children. She expressed excitement for coming to Ethiopia because the workshop themes are very close to the African heart. Abubakar indicated that in Africa, children are raised within a village—within a community, so it is important to explore not just the processes enabling families and communities to invest in their children, but also to hear from these families and communities themselves on such investments. Darmstadt pointed out that in looking across the financing models, policy environments,

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leaders. They are a group with intense energy and dedication who champion the well-being of young children and ensure their protection in the political sphere.

programmatic viewpoints, and the relationships among all three of these levels, given the workshop’s focus on family and community investments, it is particularly important to bring their voices and unique perspectives into the room. Still, Darmstadt made the challenge to go beyond engaging the voices of families and communities to ensure policy decisions include these voices.

Box 1-1 provides the full statement of task for the workshop, while Box 1-2 describes the forum and its objectives. Appendix A provides a list of abbreviations and acronyms used in this report, Appendix B contains the workshop agenda, and Appendix C includes the speaker biographies.

WORKSHOP OVERVIEW

The workshop topics were designed to highlight financing models and policies for supporting family and community investments; explore country-level decision-making tools that would provide governments a mechanism to measure program impacts and to scale up interventions; provide perspectives from programs; bring in voices from the ground; explore the specific situation of making investments in families and communities during and after acute disruptions; and lay out aspirations expressed by workshop speakers to further connect the financing and policies back to impacts for young children and their caregivers across the globe. Darmstadt noted that with 75 percent of workshop speakers coming from sub-Saharan Africa, the workshop provided the space to highlight regional issues and hear from those working in the region.

ORGANIZATION OF THE WORKSHOP SUMMARY REPORT

This summary report details the presentations delivered during the public workshop. The presentations are grouped into chapters, starting with definitions of family and community investments laid out in Chapter 2; financing models for supporting family and community investments in Chapter 3; global and country-specific policies for investments in young children and country-level decision-making tools that provide governments a mechanism to measure program impacts and to scale up interventions in Chapter 4; perspectives from programs in Ethiopia in Chapter 5; voices from the ground highlighting family and community investments in Chapter 6; the specific situation of making investments in families and communities during and after acute disruptions in Chapter 7; and aspirations to further connect the financing and policies back to impacts for young children and their caregivers across the globe in Chapter 8.