Strategic Initiatives
WHOLE CHILD INITIATIVE
 The Whole Child Initiative was created to identify, chronicle and support grassroots community-based projects worldwide helping children thrive in especially difficult circumstances. Its mission was to build a learning community based on recent findings in early childhood development combined with traditional approaches achieving extraordinary results at the village and community level.
The Initiative has sought to integrate the insights of current research in the neurosciences, child development and learning with global models and "best practices," and to promote their application in the design of social and educational policies. Convened by Dr. Jane Goodall, the Initiative was established in 1997 as an umbrella for networking on child-related issues with concerned organizations and individuals.
In recent years, exciting breakthroughs in clinical, social, and neuroscientific research provided a detailed view of how children optimally develop. Advances in functional scan imaging have revealed that the human brain is only partially formed at birth and that early experiences can change its physical structure and wiring. Together with Dr. Stanley Greenspan, one of America's leading child psychiatrists, a group of prominent clinicians and researchers has identified the critical requirements for the post-natal development of a healthy mind which they call the "irreducible needs" of infants and children, or the factors that must be present to enable young children to progress successfully from one developmental stage to another.
Briefly, the irreducible needs of children were defined as:
1) a safe, secure and nurturing environment that includes a daily relationship with at least one stable, predictable, comforting and protective adult;
2) emotional interactions geared to the child's developmental needs and level;
3) ongoing intense relationships with the same caregivers, including the primary one, early in life and throughout childhood;
4) sights, sounds, touches and other sensations tailored to the baby's unique nervous system to foster learning, language, awareness, attention, and self-control;
5) experiences that build a sense of initiative and competency including risk-taking and failure;
6) limits and expectation/structure and clear boundaries;
7) stable neighborhoods and communities within which families can achieve these goals.
The recognition that certain "irreducible needs" of the child must be met at various stages of development requires a fundamental reconsideration of how children are being raised in contemporary societies.
The costs of ignoring the basic early needs of our children at all levels of society are staggering and far outweigh the investment we make in the early years. The cycle of damage begins early -- in the young pregnant teen's womb, impoverishes a life with frustration and violence, and ends up with a human being lost to himself and society through murder or incarceration -- and costs untold wasted billions.
At the same time, we see the challenges of increasing numbers of working parents struggling to meet and balance family and financial needs. These challenges have finally gained national attention in the United States, where in the fall of 1997 the White House hosted a Conference on Childcare at which issues of quality, affordability and availability of childcare were discussed.
For the first two years, the State of the World Forum explored the critical needs of children that ensured their healthy development. Through the Whole Child Initiative, the Forum put a spotlight on work-family challenges and on model childcare programs that support the healthy development of younger children throughout the world.
In the U.S. over 50% of children grow up in various day care facilities, 80% of which are inadequate and not properly regulated. Given the fact that the U.S. falls far below international standards in providing quality care for its youngest children, we believe that we have much to learn about childcare policies from the international community, and that all countries might benefit from recent findings on early childhood development.
To this end, the Forum began collaborating closely with Kenneth Jaffe of the International Child Resource Institute (ICRI), a non-profit organization founded in 1981 to improve the lives of families and children around the world, to bring together an international panel of policy makers and child development experts from Europe, North and South America, Africa and Asia at the 1998 State of the World Forum gathering. The Panel examined the impact of world-wide social trends and market forces on the ways societies have traditionally cared for their children. Dr. Greenspan's "Index of Irreducible Needs" was used to help provide a context for discussions on childcare policies. The Panel met with the ongoing Working Group for interdisciplinary dialogue, to profile model programs that help meet the "irreducible needs of children," and to initiate projects promoting criteria for measuring quality care and publicizing cutting edge research.
Dr. Jaffe and ICRI set up a variety of measurably successful child-outreach programs across the globe. He oversees 52 dedicated field workers in offices and affiliated projects in the U.S., Brazil, the Netherlands, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malaysia, Eritrea, and Sudan, and is frequently consulted on childcare issues by government bodies and corporations around the world. When invited to assist local governments, ICRI's intent is always to build self-sufficient and internally-managed programs.
The Working Group included experts in developmental psychology, neonatology, and education as well as hands-on child advocates, and directors of successful social service programs. It included such well-known personalities as actor-director and child activist Rob Reiner and renowned scholars: primatologist Dr. Jane Goodall; Dr. Stanley Greenspan, child psychiatrist, author, and founder of Zero-to-Three; and Dr. Marshall Klaus, a neonatologist, author, and pioneer researcher in parent-infant bonding issues. They served as an advisory body and reviewed all materials the Initiative published and distributed. The network of organizations working with the Initiative included the Jane Goodall Institute, the Children's Defense Fund, UNICEF, Johnson & Johnson, Zero-to-Three, the Waldorf Early Childhood Association of North America, The Families and Work Institute, the Institute for Play, the International Child Resource Institute, European Commission Network on Childcare, and the I Am Your Child Campaign.
Whole Child Initiative Projects
The International Panel Discussion and Forum working sessions served as the basis for converting the Initiative's mission into action and developing the following projects:
Launching the International Campaign on the Irreducible Needs of Children Index
To develop the international campaign to promote the Index of Irreducible Needs of Children and encourage its use, the Initiative assembled an International Interdisciplinary Advisory Group and created an electronic database to catalogue research, solutions, and baseline criteria for measuring quality care. The information was disseminated in electronic and written form, and enhanced its findings through collaborating and networking with a variety of organizations such as the Jane Goodall Institute, UNICEF, the Carnegie Corporation, the Consultative Group on Early Childhood Care and Development, Johnson & Johnson, and others.
This Index was also circulated among members of the U.S. Congress, and was well received by both Republicans and Democrats alike. These insights were critical at a time when legislators in the U.S. were reconsidering policy regarding childcare. Dr. Greenspan presented the Index before the Senate Subcommittee on Children and Families and continues to consult legislators, foundations and major think tanks on children's issues.
Published Materials on Global Policies that Promote the Needs of Families and Children
To educate policy makers, parents, care providers and the general public, the research supporting the Index of Irreducible Needs was published in a variety of formats. Information "toolkits" were also developed and specifically tailored to diverse readerships, and a Whole Child Catalog creatively packaged as a book with an interactive CD were also developed.
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