The 6th International Conference on Poverty Reduction and Early Child Development calls for building a poverty-free future
The 6th International Conference on Poverty Reduction and Early Child Development was successfully held in Beijing on 5-6 November 2018 to promote international exchanges and cooperation on early child development, an integral part of global poverty reduction.
The symposium was sponsored by the Development Research Center of the State Council, hosted by the China Development Research Foundation (CDRF), co-hosted by Asian Regional Network for Early Childhood Development (ARNEC) and Center for International Knowledge on Development (CIKD).
With the theme “Towards a Poverty-free Future”, the conference gathered about 300 participants from governments, academia, international organizations, the business community and civil society to discuss subjects concerning different stages of a child’s life, such as parenting models, nutrition interventions and preschool education.
China has lifted 700 million people out of poverty by 2018
In 2014, China issued a national plan for child development in poverty-stricken areas, and subsequently carried out a series of targeted policies in education, health care and other fields.
Li Bin, vice chairman of Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, said at the opening of the two-day conference that China has lifted more than 700 million people out of poverty over the past four decades, accounting for over 70 percent of global poverty reduction.
The development-oriented poverty-reduction approach has played an significant role in delivering this achievement, Li said, adding that China has been focusing on improving the capabilities of the impoverished to develop independently to stop poverty being passed on to further generations.
According to the 2018 Global Multidimensional Poverty Index revealed by United Nations Development Programme and Oxford University, the level of global child poverty is staggering. Half of all poor people — 49.9%- are children under 18 years old. Over 666 million children are passing their childhood in poverty. Among these children, around 40% live in sever poverty. (View the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index 2018)
Li contended that ensuring high quality education and health care services for all children in poverty-stricken areas holds the key to winning the battle against poverty. China is willing to work with other countries to safeguard the interests and enhance the welfare of children.
VEECs project won 2018 WISE award
Li Wei, chairman of the CDRF, said at the conference that the “Village Early Education Centers” (VEECs) project, an impact investment solution provides accessible early childhood development services in remote and impoverished Chinese initiated by the CDRF, won 2018’s World Innovation Summit.
Statistics provided by the CDRF show that as of June 2018, 2300 free kindergartens have been set up in villages located in 19 impoverished counties in nine central and western Chinese provinces. As much as 170 thousand children have benefited from the project with the preschool enrollment rate approaching 90 percent in those areas.
The implementation of this “one village one preschool” project has narrowed the gap between rural children and their urban peers in terms of their intelligence level.
Despite the progress in early child development and poverty reduction, the chairman declaimed, China is still facing challenges in achieving the goal of eliminating extreme poverty by 2020.
There is a growing trend of intergenerational transmission of poverty in China, with most of the poor households unable to provide good nutrition, education and health care for next generations.
Poverty alleviation through technology
A potential way to speed up the process of poverty reduction is through technology programs.
Dr. Tat Lam, CEO of SZC Impact Holdings, was invited by the CDRF to deliver a speech at one of the plenary sessions of the conference-Applying Technology Innovations to Advance ECD.
Lam suggested that by applying blockchain technology, new means such as decentralised identification and smart contracts can be implemented to provide quality education resources and care to every poor child in rural areas.
Recently, CDRF has launched “One yuan Nutrition Package” and collected data through smartphone applications, so that parents who go out to work can view the child’s development through cloud computing.
