February Updates from Whole Child International
Our team is in the midst of our Protection and Quality of Care for Children project with USAID. Here are a few highlights from our fieldwork.
On Tuesday, December 17, 2019, Whole Child International and UNICEF/El Salvador signed a Letter of Interest (LOI) to coordinate and deliver joint actions to strengthen and improve El Salvador’s National Child Protection System, specifically with regard to expanding the social workforce to ensure the rights of the child are upheld. The signatories on this LOI were Ivette Blanco, UNICEF Representative in El Salvador, and Sonia Silva-Urrutia, WCI’s Country Director and Legal Representative in El Salvador. Ms. Blanco expressed how pleased she was to be able to formalize the working relationship between both organizations and said she had high expectations for our joint work and success in moving forward our common child protection initiatives. Ms. Silva confirmed WCI’s commitment to work alongside UNICEF in promoting child-centered policies to improve their quality of care, well-being, protection and security.
Whole Child has begun its training of caregivers in El Salvador and carried out a first round of training of caregivers from urban early childhood centers during December 2019 and January 2020. Over 200 caregivers and technical staff from ISNA and Ministry of Education participated in the sessions which focused on concepts of attachment and vulnerability.
In the above photograph you can see an exercise with the dolls, which is an activity during the caregiver training to make the participants aware of and how to build relationships, bonds, and attachments between the caregiver/educator and the child. It is a facilitated process lasting all day where participants build their own baby and participate in role play, including as family members bringing their child to the center, or as educators, who adopt different attitudes while taking care of the child. Through these different scenarios, the activity becomes an applied learning experience where the facilitator helps address a range of common issues that may come as a result of such an exchange.
This activity was developed for Early Head Start and Child Care programs by technical staff at ZERO TO THREE (a US-based organization) approximately 10 years ago. Whole Child has adapted the highly experiential and interactive learning techniquest to the El Salvador context.
Stay tuned for future updates!