The Bernard van Leer Foundation is pleased to announce Ms. Lisa Jordan as the new Executive Director as of 13 July 2009. Read more (pdf).

The Bernard van Leer Foundation is today featured in the Financieel Dagblad. The article (in Dutch) deals with the challenges being faced by private foundations because of the ongoing financial crisis.

Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu will be guest of honour at foundation partner TREE’s celebration of 25 years of working in early childhood development in South Africa. The celebration is part of a practical symposium on “Mitigating the Impact of HIV and AIDS on Young Children”, from 3-5 August 2009.

A new foundation working paper, Developing programmes to promote ethnic diversity in early childhood: Lessons from Northern Ireland, looks at case studies from Northern Ireland to draw lessons on developing programmes to promote ethnic diversity in early childhood. The author, Paul Connolly, is a professor at Queen’s University Belfast and the founding Co-Director of the Joint Learning Initiative on Children and Ethnic Diversity.

The foundation is pleased to announce the inaugural 2009 Oscar van Leer Fellowships for journalists. See the press release (pdf) to find out more about who is eligible and how to apply.

Children, context and curriculum in multicultural education is a foundation-supported project discussed in the Spring 2009 issue of the Harvard Educational Review in an article by Zvi Bekerman of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Please note a subscription is required to view the full article.

Musharaka is a collective of five Arab early childhood organisations, representing a common vision across Israel for respecful inclusion of young Arab children into the country's systems of early childhood education and care. This evaluation report (pdf) assesses the impact of the educational resources produced and disseminated by the collective.

Foundation partner Salgulu last week held the second in a series of meetings among Peruvian NGOs entitled “Investment in Children: Key Factor for Poverty Eradication in the Country.” This initiative promotes the permanent inclusion of investment in children in the national social and public agenda. Read more (pdf).

"These are tense moments for the Hagar community, but we are confident that we will be able not only to deal with the tension but also eventually overcome it by educating a new generation of Jews and Arabs - a generation for whom violence is simply not an option." Read the latest from foundation partner Hagar (pdf).

Readers may be interested in this research report (pdf) into changes in attitudes and behaviour caused by the “Parents as Partners” project. Implemented by foundation partner the Negev Institute for Strategies of Peace and Development, the project worked with mothers and children in Bedouin villages in the Negev region of Israel.