A multi-year project pursuing an integrated and comprehensive approach for linking parents, early childhood educators & allied healthcare professionals to improve the developmental trajectories of children from birth to age five.
This multi-faceted intervention combined:
- a population-based assessment of parenting practices, beliefs, knowledge, and competence,
- training and certifying parent educators,
- teaching and mentoring parents directly,
- introducing new and innovative technologies,
- providing hands on experiences in the form of workshops,
- introducing the Fatherhood initiative
Project Overview
- The Family Academy online platform with up to date, scientifically validated information accessible to all parents in Arabic & English,
- Parenting workshops, focusing on strengthening parenting competencies and fostering parent involvement in children’s development,
- Parent-Child Labs aiming to educate parents on how to increase their levels and quality of interactions with their children,
- The Early Childhood Family Play Festival, the annual celebration of the early years, with live demonstration of child-centered activities to support parents build family bonds & share quality time with their children
- The Fatherhood Initiative was introduced in the workplaces aiming to highlight the critical role of fathers and to enhance their knowledge about effective father engagement strategies,
- Parenting During The Pandemic: a comprehensive online programme for parents, providing access to practical tools, strategies, and easy play ideas to keep children healthy, happy, and learning throughout lockdown and beyond,
- Building a Professional Parenting Education System: Train The Trainer programme in partnership with:
- Incredible Years: Baby and Toddler Modules
- Brazelton Institute – Boston Children’s Hospital: Newborn Behavioral Observations (NBO) system™
Making Children's Voices Heard
Image extracted from Video documentation about the Chinese ink drawing project
The Voices of Children project aims to enable young children from across the world to capture moments in time, highlight their creativity, share their art and tell the world what is special to them. Specifically, the project aims to honour children’s voices by:
- collaborating with parents and early childhood teachers to promote awareness of the arts and children’s voices
- highlighting the importance and benefits of visual arts and creative learning experiences for children and families
- provide platforms to value and share the voices and ideas of children
- support young children to become globally aware
- help children to share visual expressions about their own contexts, cultures and response to the world around them
High quality, evidence-based training to support all children to work toward their full potential
Inclusion is not just about a child with a disability, but an approach that ensures all children have opportunities to learn and be valued as unique individuals. The IECII will provide high quality, evidence-based training for educators and practitioners, from identification of early developmental vulnerabilities through to transition beyond the service. The training will encompass a wide range of topics which can be adapted to different cultural contexts. This will ensure those working with children are equipped to support all children to work toward their individual potential.
Early Years Excellence in Practice
Consistent with our goal to improve the quality of early childhood care and education across the world, the Annual Bright Start International Conference brings together the leading international experts in early childhood to provide state of the art and state of the science training in how to best nurture the hearts and minds of today’s young children.
Early Years Excellence in Practice is the motto of the conference and is organized in 2 dynamic Tracks:
Track 1: for typically developing children aged 0-5Y
Track 2: for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder & special educational needs