Lisa Jordan on the 60th anniversary events

By Lisa Jordan, Executive Director, 17 November 2009

Last week, to mark 60 years of the Bernard van Leer Foundation, we held two very special events in The Hague.

First, we reached out to the corporate community in the Netherlands. We were fortunate enough to bring together three child advocates with three captains of industry and discuss the future of children both here and abroad.

We are profoundly grateful to Peter ter Kulve (Chairperson, Unilever Benelux), Robert Swaak (CEO PricewaterhouseCoopers), Heleen Terwijn (founder of IMC Weekendschool), Leonard Geluk (Chairperson, CVB of ROC Midden Nederland), Loek van den Boog (founder of Net4kids) and Sjoerd van Keulen (Chairperson, Holland Financial Center) for taking part in the discussion.

To stimulate knowledge on the issues young children face, we also launched the Oscar van Leer Fellowships for young journalists, to train them to recognize children’s issues, and to enhance the quality of media coverage. You can meet five of our new Oscar van Leer Fellows in the videos on the right (the sixth Fellow, Erick W Ndung from Kenya, was unfortunately unable to join us for this event).

At the same time as we are reaching out to create new advocates for young children, the Dutch media is showing what can be achieved when society focuses on its youngest members. For this week, Sinterklaas arrived in the Netherlands.

Tune into Dutch TV at 6:40 pm every night, and you will see the news program tracking Sinterklaas’s journey to the Netherlands from Spain. (Unlike his North Pole-based namesake, Sinterklaas wisely prefers to live in sunnier climes).

This year, a terrible storm hit Sinterklaas’s boat, and many of the presents were swept overboard. What to do? Teachers are discussing the problem in schools. The national TV channel is encouraging children to email suggestions. And even the adult news channels covers the story.

When Sinterklaas arrives, he is greeted by the Spanish ambassador and tours the Netherlands, where he is met by mayors in every town. It is in stark contrast to my home country, the US, where kids can expect to see Santa only in a shopping mall.

Notwithstanding the serious social questions surrounding Sinterklaas’s helpers, Zwarte Pieten, it is absolutely stunning to see the extraordinary national effort that goes into perpetuating pure joy for all the children in this country.

You can’t help thinking, ‘Wouldn’t it be incredible if this energy went into public policies for kids?’

The Netherlands is often held up as a model country for its social policies. But like many countries in the West, it is undergoing a social revolution that is not adequately understood.

In 1996, just under 20,000 children were in day care. Today, there are 655,000 children in day care. The industry is booming. But we know from research that the quality of care is not keeping pace. In fact, every year, it slips even further.

The government is reluctant to enforce or even endorse national quality standards, for fear of being seen as too directive. As a result, professionals in the crèche and day care centers whom are required to have general social work skills, receive specialized training for only six months with a focus on young children.

Their status in society is below that of other teachers and care givers who work with older children. Parents are generally grateful for any space at all in a crèche and are reluctant to rock the boat on quality, if it would jeopardize their own child’s spot.

Having so many children in day care offers an enormous opportunity to increase all children’s capacity to learn, regardless of their social backgrounds, to stimulate their development and expand their possibilities in life. That opportunity is being lost.

We know now from neuro-science how critical the first four years are to a child’s development. If we don’t get it right from zero to four, we will pay as a society for a lifetime. However, just try to get a government to invest in zero to four. In this field we count it as a success if education starts at four.

To close the gap between what we know about brain development in the first years of life, and what we include in care for young children, will require stronger advocates to stand up for overwhelmed new parents and under valued crèche attendants.

By reaching out to both young journalists and corporate leaders, we hope to make young children everybody’s business. We can’t think of better advocates for children. Except for maybe Sinterklaas.