At its peak, school closures due to COVID-19 occurred in 191 countries, affecting nearly 1.6 billion students and 63 million teachers ( UNESCO 2020 ). While these numbers are unprecedented, large-scale school closures are not. Every year, nearly 75 million children experience disruptions in their...

For the past year, Patricia Cabrerizo has been engaging in a study, led by the Global Center for the Development of the Whole Child and in partnership with UNESCO’s Horizontes program, on understanding local perceptions of social and emotional skills in rural communities of two regions in Peru...

The group of women sat in the quiet courtyard, six feet apart, and looked around in silence: some avoided eye contact, while others did their best to catch another’s eye, trying to gauge the energy in the room and who would speak first. We had just watched a screening of a parenting video that shows...

The Global Center for the Development of the Whole Child is pleased to announce the publication of Hannah Chandler and Dr. Neil Boothby’s manuscript, “ Causes of family separation and barriers to reunification: Syrian refugees in Jordan” in the Journal of Refugee Studies . Additionally, we are...

When it comes to assessing whole child development (WCD), there are countless factors involved. Vyjayanthi Sankar, from CSSL in India, sat down with the Global Center for the Development of the Whole Child (GC-DWC), to share some of her experience around the assessment of WCD in India. She discusses...

Social and emotional learning (SEL) is a complex term with different meanings and understandings across cultures and contexts. However, understanding these context-specific meanings is vital to implementing and measuring the success of SEL programs as SEL does not occur in a vacuum, an insight...

Michael Ward is a Senior Policy Analyst at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and a member of the Measuring What Matters Learning Partnership which the Global Center for the Development of the Whole Child (GC-DWC) chairs. In June 2020, Michael joined the GC-DWC’s...

As COVID-19 continues to disrupt the lives and livelihoods of families around the world, Haitian parents, in particular, struggle to find hope amid the pandemic. With a history of political instability and a political election looming in October, they are bracing themselves for another tumultuous...