Enabling responsive early childhood strategies: the Primokiz Approach for Local Governments

The Primokiz approach has proved to be a successful vehicle for building a sustainable infrastructure of cross-sector capacity at the local level, backed-up by political support and funding able to shape and implement early childhood strategies and plans rooted in the needs of the communities. Using the approach, new services have been created or expanded to meet the needs of children and families that previously were unknown. New outdoor spaces or playgrounds have been built for different age groups, additional education, health, social working staff have been hired, and capacity building programs for staff working in ECEC services were provided.

During this webinar, implementers from Romania and Slovenia will share about the process that has brought early childhood onto local agendas, built expertise and capacity to learn and analyze local needs, to make informed and responsive decisions, and how they laid the foundations for an empowered local leadership that understands that early childhood development and early years provision require a cross-sector mindset, and a close look to the real needs of children and families.  

The webinar will answer the following questions:

• What is Primokiz and what is its unique added value in working at the municipality level to improve the early childhood system?
• To what challenges the implementation of Primokiz helped in finding the answers?   
• What are the main achievements from implementing the Primokiz approach?
• What did we learn from implementing the Primokiz approach?
• How is the Primokiz contributing to enabling responsive early childhood solutions for the most vulnerable groups, including the refugee children and their families who fled Ukraine?

Speakers: Carmen Lica – Executive Director, Step by Step Center, Romania; Cristiana Boca – Early Childhood Coordinator, Step by Step Center, Romania; Mateja Rezek – Researcher, Education Research Institute – Step by Step Center for Quality in Education, Slovenia 

Moderator: Dr. Mihaela Ionescu – Program Director, ISSA

For more information, click here.