Progress For Children

YouTube personality Connor Franta shares the lessons he has learned on his journey from small-town boy to Internet sensation

The sixth issue of Progress for Children reports on the status of child-specific targets set by world leaders at the May 2002 UN General Assembly Special Session on Children. This special edition examines more than 35 key indicators in the four broad areas identified at the Special Session as requisite to building ’A World Fit for Children'. It also analyses the Millennium Development Goals and provides information on the state of child protection.

Undernutrition contributes to the deaths of about 5.6 million children under five in the developing world each year. It can lead to poor school performance and dropout, it threatens girls' future ability to bear healthy children and it perpetuates a generational cycle of poverty. This volume of Progress for Children reports on the world's performance in improving nutrition in young children, a crucial step towards meeting the Millennium Development Goals.

Children are already learning at birth, and they develop and learn at a rapid pace in their early years. This provides a critical foundation for lifelong progress, and the adults who provide for the care and the education of young children bear a great responsibility for their health, development, and learning. Despite the fact that they share the same objective - to nurture young children and secure their future success - the various practitioners who contribute to the care and the education of children from birth through age 8 are not acknowledged as a workforce unified by the common knowledge and competencies needed to do their jobs well. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 explores the science of child development, particularly looking at implications for the professionals who work with children. This report examines the current capacities and practices of the workforce, the settings in which they work, the policies and infrastructure that set qualifications and provide professional learning, and the government agencies and other funders who support and oversee these systems. This book then makes recommendations to improve the quality of professional practice and the practice environment for care and education professionals. These detailed recommendations create a blueprint for action that builds on a unifying foundation of child development and early learning, shared knowledge and competencies for care and education professionals, and principles for effective professional learning. Young children thrive and learn best when they have secure, positive relationships with adults who are knowledgeable about how to support their development and learning and are responsive to their individual progress. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 offers guidance on system changes to improve the quality of professional practice, specific actions to improve professional learning systems and workforce development, and research to continue to build the knowledge base in ways that will directly advance and inform future actions. The recommendations of this book provide an opportunity to improve the quality of the care and the education that children receive, and ultimately improve outcomes for children.

This report offers a rationale for urgently scaling up effective interventions to reduce the global burden of child and maternal undernutrition. It provides information on nutrition strategies and progress made by programmes, based on the most recent data available. The success stories and lessons leaned that are described in the publication demonstrate that reducing undernutrition is entirely feasible. The report presents detailed, up-to-date information on nutritional status, programme implementation and related indicators for the 24 countries where 80 per cent of the world’s stunted children live. While this report is a call to action for these 24 high-burden countries, it also highlights the need for accelerated efforts to reduce undernutrition in all countries.

The Pocket Book is for use by doctors nurses and other health workers who are responsible for the care of young children at the first level referral hospitals. This second edition is based on evidence from several WHO updated and published clinical guidelines. It is for use in both inpatient and outpatient care in small hospitals with basic laboratory facilities and essential medicines. In some settings these guidelines can be used in any facilities where sick children are admitted for inpatient care. The Pocket Book is one of a series of documents and tools that support the Integrated Managem.