When:                  Dec 16, 2 pm CET   

Duration:             90 minutes

Parents and caregivers are the most important people for the young child to develop and thrive. Each family’s capacities differ; however, they all welcome support to feel better about themselves and their parenting abilities. They want to engage with their children in responsive, supportive, joyful, and playful ways that guarantee optimal parenting and child outcomes.  

Research is indicating that today’s families are more isolated than before and lack the social support they used to get from social networks and extended family. It is also stressed that parenting is affected by the availability of resources and comprehensive and family-friendly services in their immediate environment. This has a profound effect on families’ wellbeing and therefore child’s wellbeing.

Parents have an obligation to take care of their children and try their best to do so, but they often feel alone. Every child and every family needs to have their “nurturing” orbit, informal or formal, and the best way to provide such support is to embed it within the community context  where families live. 

To create a change, stakeholders across different professional (e.g., health, welfare, education etc.) and societal sectors (e.g., business, civil society, media, et.) need to overcome the customary way of functioning in silos and act in a coordinated way while keeping the best interests of the child’s family and parents in focus.

In 2019, the LEGO Foundation started a partnership with UNICEF to scale parenting interventions that promote playful interactions, increase global knowledge and buy-in for playful parenting programs, and bolster primary caregivers’ demand for playful learning during the early years. Through this partnership, the work on Playful Parenting is advancing by creating and sharing local and regional knowledge, advocacy, and in-depth country-level work in Zambia and Serbia. 

UNICEF Serbia mobilized different stakeholders, including academia, business, and civil sector, representatives of local governments, ECD services, and parents, using playful parenting as a vehicle to trigger an impactful change, and create nurturing “orbits” around families while building on their strengths. Serbian stakeholders are making the first steps, learning from each other, empowering each other, and creating a dialogue space. In this webinar, they are willing to share their activities, ideas, and lessons learned. 

Why join this webinar:

• Get insight into the efforts that UNICEF Serbia, in a broad partnership with diverse stakeholders, is making to connect different institutions and programs at the local level and shed light on the quality of services to families and strengthening support to playful parenting. 
• Learn how and why the Playful parenting program can trigger an ecological approach and help mobilize local communities to act on behalf of parents and children.
• Learn about the Family Life Cycle Approach, characteristics of enabling communities, and an accessible ECD system that provides families with a parenting continuum of support (from universal to specific and targeted).
• Get more information on why “one size fits all” approach does not work and the alternative ways of reaching out to parents, supporting them, and giving them a voice.
• Learn about the roles that local governments, civil society, media, and the business sector can have in supporting playful parenting and contributing to mitigating parents’ risk of getting overstressed and alienated from their children during challenging times, including COVID-19. 

Get inspired and build on lessons learned, good ideas, and practices from Serbia and plant a seed of change in your community. 

Moderators:

Zorica Trikic, Senior Program Manager, ISSA   

Panelists:     

• Diego Adame, Initiatives Lead, Global Programmes, LEGO Foundation
• Jelena Zajeganović-Jakovljević, Early Childhood Development Specialist, UNICEF Serbia
• Ivana Mihić, Associate Professor of the Department of Psychology, Faculty of Philosophy in Novi Sad
• Miša Stojiljković, father, journalist and author of the RTS shows “Papa, you`re crazy”
• Maja Knežević-Romčević, Board Secretary at the Standing Conference of Cities and Municipalities
• Nataša Krstić, UNICEF consultant

Watch webinar recording