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Making a Difference: Early Childhood Education in Refugee Camps
Since mid-2022, a minimum of 103 million people, of which 36.5 million are children, have been forcibly displaced because of conflict, violence, or persecution. 1 in 6 children have spent their early years surrounded by war and instability, and about 48% of all forcibly displaced children are not in school (Kirollos et al., 2018; United, n.d.-b). The majority of these people live in refugee camps and will stay in displacement for years, often without access to any education (Ensuring, 2021).
Understanding the need to provide access to education, some organizations have found their way into refugee camps. One of those organizations is PILAglobal. PILA is one of the few non-profit organizations focused specifically on providing early childhood education (ECE) to young children and families in refugee camps where there is zero access to education (PILAglobal, n.d.).
Why Early Childhood Education in Refugee Camps?
Many refugee children experience profound physical and emotional traumas from the conflicts they left behind and from daily life in refugee camps. They’re immensely vulnerable and are exposed to all risks ranging from sexual exploitation to forced recruitment and beyond (United Nations Children, 2017). Younger refugee children face additional challenges as the physical deprivation, psychological trauma, constant stress, and inadequate socioemotional and cognitive development can have lasting effects on their ability to learn, grow, and excel (Kirollos et al., 2018).
While education generally imparts important practical and cognitive skills, ECE specifically helps young children under the age of 6 learn how to handle the stressors they encounter and provides them safe areas to play, thrive, and create positive change by developing their tolerance, confidence, and hope (Grantham-McGregor et al., 2007). Additionally, ECE can provide language instruction in the majority language of the host country, which will provide refugee children a greater degree of school readiness. The provision of high quality ECE has also been shown to reduce gaps in outcomes between refugee children and native-born children, while also increasing academic performance, future employment opportunities, income, and overall health. Beyond the children themselves, ECE has also been shown to connect refugee families to the larger community, fostering social capital and social cohesions through the provision of spaces in which diversity, tolerance and respect are nurtured (Park et al., 2018).
Yet, despite this evidence, more than 200 million children under the age of 5 from around the world fail to reach their full developmental potential because they don’t have access to ECE (Grantham-McGregor et al., 2007).
PILAglobal
PILA recognized the growing need for ECE among refugees. So, in 2018, PILA opened its first Nest—an education and play space for young refugee children—in a community center in Lesvos, Greece. Since then, PILA has opened three additional Nest’s for refugees in Athens, Greece, and in Tijuana, Mexico (PILAglobal, n.d.).
In these refugee camps—which are often fraught with conflict and violence—PILA provides one of the only places where young children and their parents or guardians can feel safe, and learn. As its CEO states, “we are teaching for democracy…building social skills, problem solving, and confidence as a learner, to say nothing of math, science, and literacy” (L. Weissert, personal communication, February 24, 2023).
Understanding that families have different needs and wants, and that each country context is different, the Nest centers are inquiry- and play-based and look like the children they serve. There is no one size fits all model to ECE, rather, each program’s structure is unique, reflecting the needs of the communities, and being culturally responsive. PILA provides the infrastructure and materials, but then each Nest is maintained, in part, by the community it serves. And once it is established, local partners are brought in to provide additional funding and support, while ensuring the program is responsive to the needs of the community. PILA’s ECE program is thus highly sustainable and scalable (L. Weissert, personal communication, February 24, 2023).
Lindsay Weissert and her team have seen how providing ECE to young refugee children helps build social skills, confidence, and the disposition children need to solve the world’s problems. She believes that “these are children that will go on to solve the problems of their own countries and communities.”
Migration is not going to stop any time soon, and the need for quality education won’t end either. Data has shown that the number of child refugees has increased by a staggering 812% since the beginning of the 21st century (United, n.d.-b). Thus, governments, international organizations, and NGOs need to enact laws and increase their risk appetites to implement programs that will provide ECE to children, setting children up for learning and protecting them from the harms of refugee life. With improvements in access to quality education, we will be able to see a positive change in refugee life and the lives of refugee children.
References
Ensuring Quality Early Childhood Education for Refugee Children: A New Approach to Teacher Professional Development – World. (2021). ReliefWeb. https://reliefweb.int/report/world/ensuring-quality-early-childhood-education-refugee-children-new-approach-teacher
Grantham-McGregor, S., Cheung, Y. B., Cueto, S., Glewwe, P., Richter, L., & Strupp, B. J. (2007). Developmental potential in the first 5 years for children in developing countries. The Lancet, 369(9555), 60–70. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736(07)60032-4
Kirollos, M., Anning, C., Gunvor, K.F., Denselow, J. (2018). The War on Children. Save the Children International. https://www.savethechildren.org.uk/content/dam/global/reports/education-and-child-protection/war_on_children-web.pdf
PILAglobal | High Quality Education for Refugee Children. (n.d.). PILAglobal. https://www.pilaglobal.org/
Maki, P., Katsiaficas, C., & McHugh M. Responding to the ECEC Needs of Children of Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Europe and North America. (2018). MPI. https://www.migrationpolicy.org/sites/default/files/publications/ECECforRefugeeChildren_FINALWEB.pdf
United Nations Children’s Fund. (2017). Unicef’s Programme Guidance for Early Childhood Development. UNICEF. https://www.unicef.org/media/107616/file/UNICEF-Programme-%20Guidance-for-Early-Childhood-Development-2017.pdf
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. (n.d.-b). Refugee Statistics. UNHCR. https://www.unhcr.org/refugee-statistics/
Refugee Education: A Brighter Future for All
To some, education is a means to produce well-rounded citizens who can participate in the global economy. To me, the purpose of education is to support the acquisition of new understanding, new skills, and most of all, the ability to think, innovate, and question. These qualities are key to development and building a better world.
In its simplest form, development is positive change and growth. This can be the improvement of infrastructures, political growth, economic growth, or even growth within a person or a change of mentality. Education facilitates development by enhancing people’s understanding of themselves, their abilities, and the world. It creates an empowered and well-informed public that is able to use their knowledge, skills, passions, and creativity to build a better and more just world.
In 2015, the UN created 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to serve as blueprints for development and the betterment of the world. The fourth SDG aims to “ensure inclusive and equitable education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all” by 2030. Under this goal, all children should have equal access to quality education, skills growth to help find employment, and the knowledge to create sustainable development (United, n.d.). However, the only way to achieve the fourth SDG is to ensure that all people have access to education, starting with early childhood education.
Early Childhood Education
Early childhood education (ECE) is key to starting children on paths of lifelong learning and fostering development. ECE is education provided to children from birth through primary school that encompasses physical, cognitive, linguistic, and social emotional development (United Nations Children, 2017). Research has shown that 90% of brain development occurs before the age of 5, demonstrating that a child’s development is fundamentally shaped by their environment in the earliest years of their life (Jones, 2022). It is in these years that children form the idea of who they are, their value, and the type of learner they will be (L. Weissert, personal communication, February 24, 2023). Thus, there is a small window of opportunity to maximize the scope of children’s abilities and skills, and create the foundation for lifelong learning tendencies.
ECE has been shown to increase children’s socioemotional skills, school readiness, and provides a nurturing and healing environment for those who have been exposed to trauma. Children involved in ECE are also less likely to be unemployed or incarcerated, and are more likely to graduate from high school (Meloy et al., 2019). Yet, less than 3% of all humanitarian aid goes to education and very few high quality ECE programs exist (L. Weissert, personal communication, February 24, 2023).
Barriers Blocking Access for Marginalized Groups
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the 1951 Refugee Convention, and the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child all enshrine education as a basic human right. The 1960 Convention against Discrimination in Education goes on to specifically require all contracting nations to give everyone, regardless of nationality, the same access to education. Thus, the humanitarian imperative is that all people, including asylum seekers and refugees, have the right to education. Sadly, saying that everyone should have access to education is different than actually providing it.
In an attempt to spur more funding and increase cooperation in providing education, the 2018 Global Compact on Refugees framework, which encompasses the commitments of 193 UN member states, was created. This framework highlights the importance of having diverse international development organizations partner with governments so that education systems can be strengthened to benefit all children, including refugees, asylum seekers, and stateless persons (Refugee, n.d.). Yet, to this day, there are still many barriers that prevent marginalized individuals, such as refugee children, from receiving and accessing any education, even ECE.
In many contexts, governments have limited funding, and as such, they often do not have the capacity to build schools in refugee camps. Some refugee children literally do not have a school to go to and can’t even get access to one. Other times, governments and NGOs are unable and unwilling to even go into refugee camps to build schools because of the present conflict and instability. Also, in various settings, governments don’t want to integrate refugee children in national education systems in hope that those children and their families would be more inclined to return to their home countries if they were sequestered away and excluded from national education (More, 2019).
As if those barriers weren’t enough, many children are excluded from formal education systems because they don’t have ID documents, course certificates, or any documentation at all. A vast amount of children also struggle to find money to cover the cost of education in their host countries as their families don’t have any money (More, 2019). Despite these facts, education is still a human right and it is the foundation for personal development and the building of a better world. We need to do better in ensuring that all children have access to quality education, especially ECE, so that they can grow and become empowered to better their own lives and the world.
References
Refugee Education | INEE. (2019, June 19). https://inee.org/collections/refugee-education#:~:text=Education%20empowers%20refugees%20by%20giving,rebuild%20their%20lives% 20and%20communities
Jones, K. (2022, December 16). Early childhood brain development has lifelong impact – Arizona PBS. Arizona PBS. https://azpbs.org/2017/11/early-childhood-brain-development-lifelong-impact/
Meloy, B., Gardner, M., Darling-Hammond, L. (2019). Untangling the evidence on preschool effectiveness: Insights for policymakers. Palo Alto, CA: Learning Policy Institute.
More than half of world’s refugee children ‘do not get an education’, warns UNHCR. (2019, September 4). UN News. https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/08/1045281
United Nations Children’s Fund. (2017). Unicef’s Programme Guidance for Early Childhood Development. UNICEF. https://www.unicef.org/media/107616/file/UNICEF-Programme-%20Guidance-for-Early-Childhood-Development-2017.pdf
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. (n.d.). Education Brief 8: Sustainable Development Goal 4 and Refugee Education. UNHCR. https://www.unhcr.org/en-us/publications/education/5a1ecd067/education-brief-8-sustainable-development-goal-4-refugee-education.html
