From the ICRI family across the globe,

The 20th anniversary of the World Forum on Early Care and Education sponsored by the World Forum Foundation (WFF) Foundation took place in Macau, April 8-11th, 2019 bringing together leaders and practitioners of early childhood education from around the world to collaborate, exchange ideas, and discuss new and innovative approaches to early childhood care and education.

As a founding member of the World Forum conference, ICRI leadership led several discussions and workshops at the event. ICRI is excited to continue to be a part of this pioneering event for children and families and share groundbreaking news and insights from the field.

Our Kenya Country Director, Ann Rubia, had a life-changing experience at WoFo. While she has worked for ICRI Kenya for 10 year years in various very successful roles, she became Country Director about 10 months ago, flew out of Kenya for the first time to WoFo, and has brought two major projects, one developing new brain-based National Teacher Training approaches in a partnership between ICRI and the Ministry of Education and one for a slum (called by foreigners ” informal settlements”, but locals living there call them slums).

This slum, called Kiambiu, of about 100.000, as driven by the community, local elected government, Ministry of Sport, and all community stakeholders, has chosen ICRI Kenya, because of our 10 years of partnership in Kiambiu, to coordinate the creation the first large park, with soccer pitches and Children’s Sensory Gardens ever developed within a slum. Ann has been the calm community organizer who has been able to bring together all interests. I was there a little over a week ago at a lively Community meeting, where the 34 selected Community Leaders from as many organizations agreed upon on the Park Design Plans. I presented those latest designs as provided by our ICRI Architectural team based on full Kiambiu input. What a joy it is to work with committed communities to make true and lasting community change!

We are planning for even more of our worldwide and U.S leaders to meet and be engaged in Canada in two years. Please do let us know how we can be of help to you in the coming months.

All the best,

 

 

 

 

Ken Jaffe, Founder & Global Director