Partnership for Child Development
 | |
| Founded | 1992 |
|---|---|
| Focus | School Health, Poverty reduction |
| Location | |
| Origins | University of Oxford Imperial College London |
Area served | Global |
| Method | Capacity building, knowledge dissemination, building the evidence base and building global partnerships. |
| Website | http://www.imperial.ac.uk/pcd, http://www.schoolsandhealth.org |
The Partnership for Child Development (PCD) is an organisation committed to improving the education, health and nutrition of school-age children and youth in low- and mid-income countries through School Health and Nutrition (SHN) interventions - such interventions are now recognised as important contributors to countries’ efforts to achieve Education For All and other Millennium Development Goals.
Working with governments, communities and agencies in over 60 countries, PCD aims to strengthen the evidence base and to provide technical assistance, enabling effective and sustainable demand driven SHN programmes to be delivered to millions of children around the world.
Formed in 1992 at the University of Oxford to bridge gaps between academia, funding bodies and the education and health sectors in low-income countries, PCD now utilises the academic expertise of Imperial College London, where its streamlined coordinating centre is based within the University's Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology.
Approach
SHN programming necessitate working across education and health sectors, PCD therefore adopts a cross-sectoral approach which sees PCD engage with specific experts, in specific countries, on specific issues, so that academic excellence, technical expertise and high level networks are brought to governments and international organizations in the country of PCD's operation. PCD currently works as part of a global consortium of partners in the field, civil society organizations, academic institutions and technical experts to understand the concerns, priorities and cultures of both the education and health sectors to develop the most effective, scaled and sustainable programmatic solutions.
Objectives
1. To strengthen the evidence base: Leading to promotion of good practice of cross-sectoral SHN programmes
PCD was founded, and remains embedded, within the academic environment of Imperial College London, in order to bridge the gap between the latest academic research and the needs of countries standing to benefit from the application of such knowledge. The use of evidence-based approaches ensures that programmes are more likely to succeed. PCD continues to produce high quality research, both academic and operational, in diverse areas informing SHN practice.
2. To strengthen the capacity of the education sectors in low- and middle-income countries: Leading to the implementation of large-scale, government-led sustainable programmes
PCD enhances the education, health and nutrition of children through expert support in government planning for SHN activities providing high quality training to educationalists and public health professionals and supporting the participation of new sectors’ in SHN activities. A major function of PCD's capacity building is by means of courses and workshops for governmental and non-governmental staff in developing countries. These include: An annual Africa Anglophone and an annual Francophone short course in SHN and HIV prevention in sub-Saharan Africa, in addition to a Southeast Asia SHN training course, alongside working with ministries of education and health to run regular workshops and network meetings in Africa on school health, nutrition and school feeding programmes.
3. To improve, collect, share and disseminate knowledge: Promoting the evidence for cross-sectoral SHN programmes
PCD uses a wide range of communication avenues to support the development and improvement of school health programmes across the globe. As well as using cutting-edge online and social media platforms it continues to employ traditional media such as the publication and dissemination of hard copy documents, including papers, reports and training materials to enable advocacy, policy and planning for SHN practitioners. PCD manages a range of online global resources, including its schoolsandhealth.org website and associated sub-sites, the FRESH portal website, the PCD, Imperial College website and its hgsf-global.org website continually tailoring the functionality and accessibility of these resources to meet the information needs of the global SHN community.
4. To strengthen global, regional, national and local partnerships: Facilitating consensus and supporting effective programme coordination and implementation
Partnerships are essential to PCD’s work around the world as we collaborate with governments, multilateral and bilateral agencies and NGOs in many different countries to work towards our goal of improving the health and education of school-age children. Such partnerships take different forms as occasion and tasks demand – from work with individual Ministries of Education to address country-specific activities and needs, to much more complex collaborations that enable global consensus about pressing issues in the field of SHN to be achieved[1].
Key initiatives PCD works on
Home Grown School Feeding (HGSF)
A key focus of PCD is to work in partnership with the World Food Programme, the World Bank and the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), to support governments in sub-Saharan Africa to develop sustainable Home Grown School Feeding (HGSF) programmes, which see free school meals delivered to schools which have been sourced from local smallholder farmers. PCD catalyses multi-sectoral government action to deliver cost-effective national HGSF programmes by providing technical assistance founded on evidence-based research.
Focusing Resources on Effective School Health (FRESH)
FRESH (Focusing Resources on Effective School Health) approach was launched at the World Education Forum in Senegal in April 2000 and is an inter-agency initiative developed by WHO, UNICEF, UNESCO and the World Bank, incorporating the experience and expertise of numerous other agencies and organisations, including PCD. Grounded in the practical experiences of leading international agencies FRESH's objectives is to identify and promote a cost effective activities which can form the basis for intensified and joint action to make schools healthy for children and so contribute to the development of child-friendly schools.
London Centre for Neglected Tropical Disease Research (LCNTDR)
The London Centre for Neglected Tropical Disease Research (LCNTRD) is a joint initiative of Imperial College London, (namely the PCD and Schistosomiasis Control Initiative (SCI)), the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and the Natural History Museum (NHM). The Centre which was launched in early 2013 undertakes cutting-edge research to build the evidence base around the control, mapping and diagnosis of NTDs and utilizes and coordinates the abundance of London’s NTD expertise and research; bringing together leading experts to tackle these diseases.
Ministry of Education Focal Point Networks, under the auspices of the Regional Economic Communities - PCD currently supports: the Southern African Development Community; Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS); Economic Community of Central African States. PCD also provides support to the emerging Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization/Association of Southeast Asian Nations Network, and the Lusophone sub-Saharan Africa Network of the Community of Portuguese and Language Countries.
Other key PCD partnerships include:
- UK Coalition Against Neglected Tropical Diseases
- The John A Kufuor Foundation
- UK Consortium on AIDS and International Development
- Partners for Parasite Control
- United Nations System Standing Committee on Nutrition, Working Group on Nutrition of School-Age Children (co-Chair).
- International School Health Network
- Neglected Tropical Disease Organization
References
- ^ Partnership for Child Development Annual Report 2011 - 2012, PCD, London.
External links
- PCD's website
- Schools & Health Website
- HGSF-global
- FRESH Portal
- London Centre for Neglected Tropical Disease Research
- Economic Community of West African States
PCD Publications
2013