Attendees from NYU, multilateral development banks, and early childhood NGOs and foundations discussed parental support initiatives.
Housed at NYU Steinhardt, Global TIES for Children hosted a launch event for the latest edition of the Van Leer Foundation’s flagship Early Childhood Matters journal last month at the Kimmel Center.
Around 60 people attended the launch event, including representatives from around NYU, such as faculty and staff from Steinhardt and NYU Langone. Also in attendance were practitioners from the early childhood community in New York City, including the International Rescue Committee, Sesame Workshop, Save the Children, and Innovations for Poverty Action.
“The launch event was a perfect opportunity to discuss interventions around parental well-being and why it’s important to children and families, as well as encourage bilateral conversations around evidence-based research, policymaking, and the human side of these innovations,” says Florencia Lopez Boo, director of Global TIES and professor of economics and applied psychology.
L-R: Florencia Lopez Boo, anthropologist and primatologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, Director of Early Childhood Programs at Carnegie Hall Tiffany Ortiz, and Special Advisor on Gender and Diversity to the President of the IDB Diana Rodríguez-Franco.
Formerly at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) where she led the Early Childhood Development agenda, Lopez Boo has partnered with the Van Leer Foundation for a decade; she was also on the advisory board for the 2022 edition of Early Childhood Matters.
“I've always been struck by the high quality of [the Van Leer Foundation’s] work, their pursuit of innovative topics, and their unwavering commitment to children,” said Lopez Boo in her opening remarks at the launch event.
Early Childhood Matters 2025 is a collection of articles dedicated to parental support—a topic that Global TIES is also invested in.
“To take these innovations to a larger number of children and caregivers, at TIES we believe we need to focus on two areas: first, scale, and second, basic science, specifically science that can have a high impact on human development and inform new interventions at scale,” says Lopez Boo. “Some of TIES’ recent interventions include a hybrid parenting program run in Jamaica that benefited children’s development and parenting practices, as well as cross-disciplinary innovations in refugee camps in Bangladesh and Lebanon and primary schools in Niger and Ghana that have also had major impacts on children and families.”
After the event, Lopez Boo’s former colleagues from IDB and World Bank attended a Global TIES staff meeting to discuss where their work overlaps and the possibility of future collaborations.
“Global TIES will continue working to make these creative, disruptive and adaptive mindsets the defining feature of services for children and their families in the years ahead,” said Lopez Boo.
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