Calls on countries to prioritise resilience

The Philippines welcomed more than 480 participants from 30 countries  to the 2025 Asia-Pacific Regional Conference on Early Childhood Development (ECD), organised by the Asia-Pacific Regional Network for Early Childhood (ARNEC) with the ECCD Council of the Philippines as host.

This year’s Conference, taking place 1-3 July in Manila, focuses on advancing inclusive and equitable ECD services highlighting the critical role of effective local governance. 

“This year, ARNEC aims to showcase that by implementing localised, fit-to-context solutions, local governments can significantly improve the quality and delivery of services, so that all children can get an equal and fair start in life,” said Dr. Sheldon Shaeffer, Chair of the ARNEC Board of Directors.

 

Assistant Secretary Roger B. Masapol of the Philippines Department of Education (DepEd) stressed: “The future of our country is not decades away. It is in our classrooms, day care centers, and homes today. When we nurture our youngest now, we are shaping the workforce, leadership, and innovation of tomorrow.”

In the Asia-Pacific region, where over 60 percent of the world’s children live, lack of access to high-quality ECD services continues to trap many children in cycles of inequity. A large number of children miss out on the nurturing environments necessary for their healthy development due to barriers related to disability, gender, geography, ethnicity, language, and socio-economic status.  

In the opening keynote, Diane Whitehead, President and CEO of Childhood Education International, added: “As global funding for early childhood development declines, the impact is being felt at the local level, where services are delivered and where children live, learn and grow; however, we have an opportunity to rethink our resourcing not just for the financing of services, but for building better and more lasting partnerships and to increase our shared responsibility. We must shift towards more distributed and diversified support as this will build resilient, responsive ecosystems for young children grounded not in dependency but in local strength and local collaboration.”

The Conference has keynote series, panel discussions, and paper presentations addressing disability inclusion, gender equity, cultural and linguistic inclusivity, poverty and geographic and urban-rural disparities, and crisis-responsive ECD systems.

Other esteemed speakers include Dr. Vibha Krishnamurthy, Founder and Executive Director of Ummeed Child Development Center; Alan Stein, Emeritus Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, University of Oxford; and Professor Vina Adriany, Director, Southeast Asian Regional Centre for Early Childhood Care Education and Parenting (SEAMEO CECCEP). 

At the Conference, UNESCO will also unveil their “Global Early Childhood and Care Education” report, while the Van Leer Foundation will launch the “Good Start Challenge,” a €2.6 million global grants opportunity that will fund solutions aimed at improving the well-being of parents of young children. TheirWorld, a children’s charity, will also kick off their “Act for Early Campaign” that calls on governments and international donors to commit at least $1 billion in new funding for childcare and pre-primary education.

This year’s Conference has been organised in collaboration with Plan International, Save the Children, Tanoto Foundation, the Early Childhood Regional Networks Fund (ECRNF), UNICEF and UNESCO, with support from the Philippine Normal University and REX Education.

To view presentations from the Conference, click here.  

To view the highlights video of the Conference, click here. 

To view photos from the Conference, click here.