Shaping the Future of Childhood: Two Key Pillars to Improve Child Development in Ecuador

"My son came here unable to speak. He wouldn't talk, he wouldn't share. He went through a total change. He is an open, cheerful, fun child today," Alexandra tells us excitedly. She is one of the mothers who takes her son to the Child Development Center (CDI) in Ibarra, Ecuador, every morning. It is a free service that is a great help for her son's upbringing and development.

Children's play and interaction with their physical and social environment are fundamental to their integral development, encompassing physical, cognitive, socio-emotional, and communication aspects. It is in this sense that Ecuador is working on the program "Inversión en calidad de los servicios de desarrollo infantil" (in English, "Investment in quality child development services"), to improve the quality and management of the CDIs and the family support service Creciendo con Nuestros Hijos (CNH) - administered by the Ministry of Economic and Social Inclusion (MIES) and serving some 300,000 children aged 0 to 3 years throughout the country.

^{Learn how child development is being promoted in Ecuador.}

Two Fundamental Pillars for Improving Service Quality

The program is structured around two fundamental pillars.

The first pillar seeks to design and implement a management model for early childhood services based on a comprehensive analysis around 3 axes:

1. the service delivery and monitoring methodology;
2. human resources and administrative management;
3. and the promotion of a safe environment for children, their families, and service personnel.

The objective is to establish specific requirements for improvements in the management of services based on a systemic and intersectoral logic, their current territorial distribution, and the ethnic diversity of each region, among other particularities.

This will involve a comprehensive review of the care provided by CDIs and CNHs, taking into consideration existing technical standards, as well as participatory processes with stakeholders at the national and local levels. The main beneficiaries of this program will be the children and their families, as well as the municipalities and organizations that cooperate with MIES for the provision of services.

Main axes of the territorial management scheme

The second pillar covers improving the quality of the CDIs by strengthening the quality of the educator-child interaction through training and continuous accompaniment of coordinators and educators via mentoring based on an adaptation of the "Luciérnaga" Program.

The implementation of the Program will be based on a cascade training strategy with 4 structured levels: Central Team and Trainers, Trainers, Mentors (CDI Coordinators), and CDI Educators. At each level, relevant actors will be trained according to their roles.

Luisa Loyo is one of the educators who fulfills this important task of teaching and caring in a CDI. "I feel very happy with my work. Helping a child acquire dexterity in their hands and walk makes you feel good, and the family also feels happy to see their child developing," she says proudly.

Both pillars of the program are expected to be developed soon, given that they complement each other and guarantee comprehensive and quality development for Ecuadorian children. While the first pillar establishes the basis for efficient management adapted to territorial diversity, the second pillar focuses on strengthening personnel's skills and capacities in direct care to promote child development. This will have an impact on the children and families, and also on the educators, who feel satisfied to see the growth of the children they accompany.

Public link

Please use the above public link if you want to share this noodl on another website.