The Bernard van Leer Foundation Annual Report 2010

"The test of our worth will be our contribution to improving the lives of children, the societies that nurture and educate them, and the societies that these children, as adults, will eventually shape."

This report details the Bernard van Leer Foundation (BvLF) grantmaking activities and financial situation for the year 2010. It discusses what impact their grantmaking has had, and lessons BvLF learned for moving forward with programme goals for 2011-2015. The report is in English, and there is also an executive summary in Spanish.

The three BvLF goals, including research commissioned by the foundation, are the following:

• Bringing quality early learning programmes to scale - Peruvian indigenous action research on decentralisation and scaling of home visits for 0-3 year olds; play consultation events in 8 countries to identify how the children’s play rights are being infringed in different ways and different contexts; and a synthesis of existing research on early childhood development and Roma children in Europe, identifying best practice. Lessons from children's voices include: Trial and error learning is valued by children, as is cultural storytelling among extended families and learning through play.
• Reducing violence in young children’s lives - Commissioned "experts in the area of violence against young children to write... papers for the online Encyclopaedia on Early Childhood Development... [and] commissioned researchers to analyse data from the International Men and Gender Equality Survey to tease out the long-term effects of experiencing violence in childhood." The foundation sent researchers into urban slums in Brazil and Peru to collect information about family violence, looking for local solutions, and to explore the impact of current Brazilian public policies aimed at reducing violence. In Israel, BvLF tasked researchers to assess the psychological effects on young children and their mothers of exposure to political and other violence. In the Netherlands, they funded the data collection on domestic violence and the interviewing of young children on their experiences of violence to understand the effectiveness of existing children’s participation initiatives and the role of the Ombudsman for Children in the Netherlands. Lessons from children's voices include: In a focus group in India, children 4-6 years old described parent disciplinary violence. In the Netherlands, children reacted more strongly to descriptions of street violence than descriptions of bullying or exclusion or TV violence. Children in Uganda mentioned alcohol related to parent violence and described how parent disagreements could end in violence against their children.
• Improving young children’s physical environments - commissioned an exploratory study in Brazil to look at how the living conditions in economically poor urban tenant houses (cortiços) impact on young children. Researchers also studied urban slums in Peru, living conditions of children in 5 Indian cities, Bedouin communities in the Negev, and children of seasonal migrants in Turkey. BvLF partnered with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the global Child Friendly Cities Initiative to produce a participatory diagnostic tool to measure child rights infringements, especially related to physical environments, and effective community and municipal action to initiate improvements. Lessons from children's voices include: Children speak of poor sanitation, lack of clean tap water, harassment when no public toilets exist, and difficulty teaching parents sanitation lessons they learn in school.

Strategies by country include:

• The Netherlands:
  • gathering data for advocacy on the issue of domestic violence and violence against children;
  • research to document the benefits of home visiting;
  • training of healthcare and childcare workers so that they are better able to spot when violence is taking place; and
  • encouraging community leaders to stand up against domestic violence.
• Uganda:
  • supporting programmes to improve food and income security, because families stressed by poverty and hunger are less able to care for their children;
  • using a community organising approach, combined with lobbying and advocacy, to improve infrastructure in water and sanitation;
  • supporting a home visiting programme through which parents of young children bring knowledge about hygiene practices and early learning directly into the home; and
  • starting a national and local dialogue on domestic violence through a communications strategy nationally as well as focused local community outreach.
• Peru:
  • lobbying the government to make more money available for home visiting programmes - both nationally through partnering with local communications NGOs, and regionally by working with the Organization of American States;
  • campaigning to change norms concerning gender equality and the social acceptability of violence, including partnering with national women’s and children’s campaign groups, making use of local radio to get messages across, and, in Iquitos, engaging community leaders and convening group discussions;
  • in Iquitos, working with local networks to stimulate community demand for better childcare services and also for better sanitation services, campaigning to change social norms around health and sanitation through public service messages, and helping to establish environmentally friendly business enterprises, such as urban agriculture, recycling, or ecological toilets.

The document then describes programme impacts of BvLF-funded programmes through stories from the field. It lists its recent bilingual publications which share what the foundation learns, in order to influence policy and practice: "Early Childhood Matters/Espacio para la Infancia"; "Early Childhood in Focus/La Primera Infancia en Perspectiva"; and "Working Papers".