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At seven o’clock on a frosty Wednesday morning I made my way from New York City to the HQ of the World Bank in Washington D.C., to meet Dr. Jim Yong Kim, President of the World Bank and talk about his commitment to end inequality in Early Childhood education. Near the Farragut Square, I found myself at a hub for global change, a financial institution that is working around the clock to free the world from poverty.

Last  month, at  the annual 2016 Spring Conference at the World Bank in Washington D.C, Dr. Kim launched a global movement to ensure all children around the world have equal opportunities to thrive and develop. At this conference of a historical importance,  our founder, Novak Djokovic, sent out  his heartfelt message and urged a global community to recognize importance of investing into early childhood education and development.

The dream of ending poverty and inequality glimmers in  every aspect of President’s Kim philosophy. His  life story, reads as an inspirational memoir. From his first job as a waiter at the Octagon House restaurant in Iowa to becoming the key player in leading the change in international development, one thing Dr. Kim knows for sure is that optimism is a moral choice.

EDITORIAL Credit: Grant Ellis/World Bank

Optimism Is a Moral Choice

Through struggle, soul searching and victory of conquering opportunities, President Kim has dedicated his life to global causes and  the pursuit of excellence. As a global leader who cares deeply about humanity, he revealed that the stories  his parents told him shaped his sense of commitment for the greater good and the many moral choices he would later make in life.

My mother’s grandfather was the first Christian in the family, but for ten, fifteen generations before that, my ancestors were all Confucian scholars, equivalent to today’s PhDs. They were court scholars, working literally in the court of the King. So scholarship was part of her family all along.

My father’s family was not so scholarly, but my grandfather was educated. He was a musician, a violinist. My father escaped from North Korea after the borders closed when he was 19, and he came down to the South to get an education, specifically to become a dentist.

My mother came to the United States when she was 18. As one of the top students in Korea, she received a top scholarship.  She ended up, interestingly, going back to her family roots and getting a PhD in Confucian philosophy. She studied at a place called Union Theological Seminary. It had some of the most prominent intellectuals of that period. She passed on these ideas from the scholars to all her kids when we were very young.

EDITORIAL Credit: Grant Ellis/World Bank

Let’s End Inequality in Early Childhood Education

So when I was eight or nine years old, I was reading and watching televised speeches of the civil rights leaders in the US, for example. My mother used to say, “you have to live your life as if for eternity” “¦ What kind of mother says something like that? It’s almost cruel in some way. But, she’d always say that to us. “¦ I was very impacted, on a very personal level, by the sense that you’re tackling some major fundamental issue that’s eternal. In other words, it’s not something that’s ‘of the moment’, it’s something that’s eternal. That approach has always gotten me the most excited. I was most focused, most able to work for long periods of time,  if I had the sense that I was working for something that was eternal.

So I had these two influences: my father, a dentist, who was incredibly practical, who taught us to work, get a degree. You have to be practical. He used to say to us: ”You’re a Chinaman living in this country, no one’s going to give you anything.”

And there’s a story that I tell, after my first semester coming home from Brown University, when I told my dad that I’m studying politics and philosophy, and he said, “After you finish your residency, you can do whatever you want.” And that’s actually  what I did, — except I first went to medical school and then started a PhD program in anthropology.  I’ve always had both of these elements in me from my mother and father. My father  was right in the sense that it’s one thing to have big ideas about equality and it’s another to take those ideas and make them actually work on the ground.

My parents grew up in the middle of nothing, and the entire country was destroyed. When I was born, Korea was one of the poorest countries in the world, and I think in that sense, one of the reasons why I identified so much with Novak  and Jelena Djokovic  is that they grew up in war, and my parents grew up in war. That’s the situation we came from.

EDITORIAL Credit: Grant Ellis/World Bank

Inequality in Early Childhood Education Starts with Pregnant Women

President’s Kim pursuit of excellence and passion for ending inequality has earned him wide recognition. He was awarded a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship and was named one of America’s “25 Best Leaders” by  U.S. News & World Report. TIME  magazine proclaimed him among “100 Most Influential People in the World”. Today, President Kim is resolute about ending childhood stunting and welcomes the partnership the World Bank has forged with the Novak Djokovic Foundation.

I’m so excited about Novak and Jelena taking up the issue of early childhood development.

To me, poverty and inequality starts with pregnant women. If we’re not committed to making sure that pregnant women, and children up to the age of five, have everything that they need, then we’re creating fundamentally unfair conditions for those children. Through absolutely no fault of their own, those children happened to be born in environments where they were condemned to not having the same kind of brain structure, literally, as these other kids.

And to have someone like Novak Djokovic , and Jelena, have the two of them, stand up and say, this is what we stand for ““ this is the most fundamental issue around poverty and inequality — that is extremely powerful. I think that if you’re not committed to ending childhood stunting, you’re not really committed to addressing inequality. And so, I’m going to meetings all the time, and I’m saying that Novak Djokovic is committed to ending inequality in early childhood education, what about you?

Join Novak Djokovic Foundation and become a part of the global movement to end inequality in Early Childhood Education. We believe in their dreams. What  about you?

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Yesterday, at the annual 2016 Spring Conference at the World Bank in Washington D.C, the World Bank Group President Jim Kim, UNICEF Executive Director Tony Lake and a panel of experts launched a global movement to ensure all children around the world have equal opportunities to thrive and develop. Our founder, Novak Djokovic, joined them and in his heartfelt message, urged leaders around the world to recognize importance of investing into early childhood education and development.

In today’s day and age, I am saddened that nearly half of all 3 to 6 years olds don’t have access to pre-primary education and one quarter of them is chronically malnourished. These gaps harm their brain development and have lifelong adverse consequences.

I was fortunate to have a loving family and much support as a young child. Now, it is my mission in life to help children across the world to have the opportunities they deserve. For this reason, I have founded the Novak Djokovic Foundation and together with UNICEF and the World Bank, we are making great things happen. Let’s start a movement and ensure we hit the ECD targets for the Sustainable Development Goals, said Djokovic.

This conference on ECE and ECD is of a historical importance. It was organised to gather the world leaders and present to them the simple truth:

• In order for us to put a stop on childhood stunting, we need to treat this as a development and an economic emergency; we need to show the world that we need to unite behind a common goal: to deliver universal access to ECD services as quickly as possible – to as many children as possible.

We at NDF strongly believe that providing early childhood education and development is not only morally right but also economically smart: if we don’t invest in our youngest, we cannot count that our countries will have sustainable economic futures.

If we don’t help our children develop into caring and productive citizens of the world, issues pertaining to inequality, rising poverty and crime rates will continue to plague our societies.

Most importantly, if we do not recognize childhood stunting as a rising problem globally, our children will continue to learn less and less at schools and will underperform in all fields of life because We have failed to give them proper care and stimulation during their formative years.

Just like our founder – Novak Djokovic – the Foundation too remains committed to leading the way in promoting the optimal development of young children. Through number of our existing programs that range from building preschools and providing high quality ECE programs to ensuring professional development of our teachers, we support children’s most crucial years of early physical, emotional and intellectual development.

Talking about Early Childhood Education and Development and the leadership of the Novak Djokovic Foundation, World Bank President Kim recently said:

I’m so excited about Novak and Jelena taking up the early childhood development, because, in my view, one of the greatest sins that all of us are committing everyday is to allow the persistence of childhood stunting.

And to have someone like Novak Djokovic and Jelena – have the two of them – stand up and say, this is what we stand for – this is the most fundamental issue around poverty and inequality. I’m going to meetings all the time, and I’m saying: Novak Djokovic is committed to ending inequality in Early Childhood Education, what about you?

I think that if you’re not committed to ending childhood stunting, then you’re not really committed to addressing inequality.

The post Novak Djokovic Calls for Global Action on Tackling Early Childhood Education appeared first on Novak Djokovic Foundation.

Why?

Because early childhood is a time of remarkable brain growth.  The years between birth and age of six lay the foundation for subsequent learning and development.  Early Childhood Education, among other things:

• enhances school readiness,
• improves children’s’ cognitive and general skills,
• increases school enrolment and
• lowers repetition and drop-out rates.

Experts have calculated that investing in children’s pre-school education gives you extremely high results for the money (what experts call “return on investment”).

Copyright: Monkey Business Images

Let me just give you a few examples which show some of the results of the concept:

• In Bangladesh, children who received center-based pre-school education outperformed their peers by 58 percent on standardized tests.
• In Columbia, children who received a comprehensive community-based Early Childhood Development (ECD) intervention were 100% more likely to be enrolled in third grade, indicating lower dropout and repetition rates for program children.
• In Argentina, one year of preschool was estimated to increase the average third-grade test score in mathematics and Spanish by 8%.
• And in Jamaica high-quality ECD interventions improved children’s cognitive development, and boosted the earnings of those with developmental delays by 25%.

So, where is Serbia in all this?

Well, the picture is bleak.

In 2007 Serbia and Albania had a similar percentage of children enrolled in pre-school education – around 50 % of all children.  Montenegro at the time was at a very low, close to 30 percent. In 2012 some 70 percent of children in Albania were enrolled in pre-school education, while in Montenegro 60 percent of them went to pre-school.  In Romania and Bulgaria, the situation is even better (around 80 and 85 percent respectively).

At the same time in Serbia, less than 60 percent of kids went to pre-school.  The situation is particularly dire among the Roma children and children from poor families:

• only five percent of Roma boys and seven percent of Roma girls living in informal settlements attend some kind of pre-school.
• And if you come from a poor family, you are ten times less likely to go to pre-school than children who were born in rich families.  

Having in mind what I said earlier, this means that children in Serbia, Roma kids and children coming from poor families have less chances of learning more and better than children in other countries, children from other ethnic groups and kids born in rich families.

We can change all of  this.

The World Bank finances more than 70 projects focused on Early Childhood Development around the world (Early Childhood Education is only a part of a bigger picture). We have the skills, the knowledge and we can support countries in ECD reforms. And there are many partners and stakeholders doing excellent work in this area such as  Novak Djokovic Foundation, UNICEF, and  Open Society Fund. There are many educators and practitioners in Serbia ready to make a change.  So let’s join forces and make sure that all children in Serbia have the tools at hand to escape the poverty trap and contribute to society!

Author: Vesna Kostic, World Bank office in Serbia  

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