Investing in children, supporting parents, enhancing pre-primary education, nutrition, health and family income, builds a population equipped to face the challenges and embrace the opportunities of the 21st century. Making the case for integrating early childhood development and social protection into the Bangladesh national poverty strategy.
BIGD and Oxford Policy Management (OPM) brought together government officials and representatives from development agencies, academia and civil society in an event titled From Childhood Development to Human Capital: Leveraging Social Protection for Social Mobility. The event highlighted the causal connections between early childhood development (ECD), education, poverty, and social mobility, and identified social protection strategies that could address these issues.
Sessions examined parenting support integrated with cash transfers, intergenerational impacts of productive safety nets, and OPM’s Thrive and DEEP programmes — including the Saving Bangladeshi Babies’ Brains initiative delivering ECD policies at scale through the Government of Bangladesh. Panellists and guests included representatives from icddr,b, RAPID, PPRC, BIDS, SANEM, CPD, the Bangladesh ECD Network, the University of Sussex, the British High Commission, the Ministry of Planning, and the Ministry of Social Welfare.
