Formative Childhood and Peace Building News

A global team of peacebuilding experts champion the transformative power of children and families, reveal proven theory of change, and sound a global call to action in new Yale-led video series.

11-year-old Lames, IRIS Refugee Ambassador resettled from Sudan in 2015, spoke at the Yale hosted Early Childhood Peace Consortium (ECPC) conference, held on 29 November 2018 at the Omni New Haven Hotel at Yale.

In partnership with UNICEF and Queens University Belfast, the Early Childhood Peace Consortium (ECPC) at the Yale Child Study Center will host an open house conference at the Omni Hotel in New Haven this Thursday, Nov. 29 from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. The organizing question for the event will be: “Can early childhood development advance ‘The Culture of Peace?’”

Faculty members at the Yale Child Study Center announce the publication of their special issue in journal, New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development (NDCAD). This Spring 2018 issue focuses on the potential of early child development programs as a viable path to peace in the context of the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.

For Yale researcher Catherine Panter-Brick, one of the most valuable lessons out of Jordan came from the young people themselves. They reminded her that resilience research "is not about rescuing victims of chaos," she says. Rather, it calls for identifying potential sources of strength that young people can draw on to survive, even thrive. "It's about reshaping your lens on the world," she says, "to what people feel respects their dignity."

An interdisciplinary research team from the Centre for Evidence and Social Innovation (CESI) has been awarded a £2m grant to study the potential for ECD (early childhood development) programmes to promote sustainable development and peacebuilding. The CESI team, led by Professor Paul Connolly (education), will work with several strategic partners, including UNICEF, the Yale Child Study Center, the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, the Global TIES for Children research center at New York University and the Early Childhood Peace Consortium.

Yale School of Public Health Professor Rafael Pérez-Escamilla has a message for low- and moderate-income countries: if you want to grow your economy and uplift your people, put money into early childhood development.

First Lady, Mrs. Sandra Granger, Friday evening, joined with United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) for the Caribbean Regional Launch in Guyana of The Lancet Series on Early Childhood Development (ECD), which focuses on the “the invaluable impact” of a nurturing environment on early childhood development. Yale professor, Rafael Perez-Escamilla (EPH) and other authors of The Lancet Series were in attendance.

The Program on Refugees, Forced Displacement, and Humanitarian Responses has been launched by the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale to promote rigorous interdisciplinary research and teaching grounded in the social sciences.