Early Childhood Education in Humanitarian Settings

Project Overview

The global refugee crisis is the defining humanitarian issue of our time, with more than 33 million children forcibly displaced due to conflict and war across the world (UNICEF, 2021). All children need nurturing care, a comforting routine, and opportunities to learn through play in the critical first years of life (Black et al., 2022; Richter et al., 2017). Refugee children are exceptional due to exposure to extreme levels of trauma and vulnerability combined with very low level of investment in early childhood education and supports in humanitarian settings. In in this paper, we summarize findings from cost-effectiveness studies of five early childhood interventions developed by Sesame Workshop for refugee children and families. A key objective of these studies is to build evidence on “low-cost” approaches that can be scaled quickly to serve as many children and families as possible.

* All images on this page credit: Ryan Heffernan / Sesame Workshop