The Moving Minds Alliance– a network convened to scale up financing, policies, and leadership in support of young children and caregivers affected by crisis and displacement– was looking to mobilize support for the prioritization of services to families caught up in crisis, focused on building resilience and fostering the wellbeing and development of young children.
UNICEF estimates 29 million children were born into conflict in 2018. These children experience the most critical development period of their lives in the context of crisis and displacement and MMA was looking to facilitate integrated early childhood services, including in education, for these young children.
As part of this, they were looking to solve the issue of Early Childhood Development in Emergencies (ECDiE) not receiving sufficient attention in financing and policymaking
Concretely, it was identified that the ECDiE issue landscape lacked i) an explicit tracker that accurately measured how muchfunding was channeled for ECDiE issues as well as ii) an overarching coalition of organizations advocating for ECDiE issues.
To solve the issue of the lack of a strong financing evidence-base in ECDiE, SEEK developed the first-ever estimate of funding levels for ECDiE. This analysis set the base for deriving advocacy targets for ECDiE issues.
SEEK also worked with all partners to create the first-ever joint advocacy agenda and strategy for ECDiE– aimed at making it a financing and policy priority in the humanitarian space. This joint advocacy strategy was adopted by a diverse set of cross-sectoral actors and became a powerful basis for setting up a formal alliance to deliver on ECDiE needs.
SEEK supported the creation of this formal alliance, including by supporting on developing its hosting arrangements and governance framework.
With SEEK’s support, MMA members and partners consolidated into a powerful multi-stakeholder partnership that could provide a united voice for advocating for ECDiE issues.
With SEEK’s support, MMA could hit the ground running with a joint and actionable advocacy ECDiE strategy that was used as the basis for shaping the agendas of governments and international organizations in the humanitarian space.
