Childhood is the point of departure for all the works of the poet Manoel de Barros. His words connect the adult with the child that used to exist and with all those around him. His poetry is inspired by a curiosity of someone who sees the world for the first time like children do. This is also the task of researchers at CIESPI/PUC-Rio in a new stage of the project Participatory and Inclusive early childhood.In this stage, questions about inclusion, participation and safety were the agenda for creating strategic methods for talking with thirty children between the ages of three and seven who are residents of Rocinha.

With the aim of enlarging the debates arising from the international project Participatory and Inclusive Early Childhood Education, CIESPI/PUC-Rio has just launched its first Policy Brief in the project. In this first bulletin, the authors address the urgent need for more spaces in early childhood education for children 0-3 in Brazil. Malcolm Bush and Renata Brasil summarize data from national and international studies that show the critical importance of investing in the expansion and improvement in quality of early education especially for children who live in contexts of vulnerability.  They also show the large gap between the demand and supply of early education places. 

As part of the Project, CIESPI staff interviewed twenty parents or adults living in the low-income Rio community of Rocinha who were responsible for children aged 0 to 5. The interviews covered a variety of themes relating to the education of the young children in their care. The following account summarizes the adults’ views on the three major topics of the research project. Depending on the circumstances, the adults were either interviewed in person or online using phone or Whatsapp. We note that inclusion and participation are overlapping terms and that the parents’ responses reflect that fact.

This new CIESPI bulletin, the result of a partnership with the University of Edinburgh and several Indian colleague organizations, is titled, Shaping Youth Futures: Youth Livelihood Options in Creating Inclusive Cities. 

CIESPI always tries to contribute something to the communities it engages in research with and this bulletin tracks two such actions in Rocinha. The first action was a collaboration with community and health organizations in the community to promote the vaccination against COVID-19 of younger children. The second was a project to train six young people in the community to listen to and work and play with young children both on-line and in local early childhood education centers.

In bulletin 4 we examine the views of early childhood staff in public, private and blended creches (‘conveniadas’) about their work, COVID, and their relations with the city of Rio.

The project is coordinated by professor Kay Tisdall at the the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and in Brazil by professor Irene Rizzini at CIESPI/PUC-Rio. The aim is to contribute to debates and actions about children and their families in two communities: Rocinha (Rio de Janeiro) and Jardim Catarina (São Gonçalo), both in the state of Rio de Janeiro. The focus is to develop partnerships to improve the state of Early Childhood Education.

In this third project bulletin we discuss the importance of early childhood education, the rights to early childhood education set out in Brazilian law and the major role creches and pre-schools play in children´s lives.

This report to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child is based on several pieces of research and responds to the UN Committee's call for research-based recommendations for children and youth in institutions. The report was co-authored with the Brazilian Beneficent Association of the Little Nazarene and the Association of Researchers and Trainers of Children and Youth (OPN and NECA).

While the whole world has suffered profound impacts from COVID-19, children and young people have suffered in particular ways. They possess fewer emotional tools for coping with such a massive upheaval. They have more difficulty in the rules of social distancing and coping with lockdowns. Recent studies show the consequences of absence from school, increases of domestic and sexual violence, separation from friends and sources of support as the pandemic also deepens social inequalities.

Concerned with these events, CIESPI presents this policy analysis which examines the actual consequences of the events surrounding COVID 19 which demand specific caring strategies for the young population bearing in mind the diverse social, economic and cultural contexts that Brazilian children inhabit.