On February 1, 2022, the CPC Learning Network, the Child Protection Area of Responsibility, and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies hosted a joint webinar to share overarching findings from three case studies on localisation initiatives and engage four panelists in a candid discussion around approaches to transferring power to national and civil society organisations: challenges, promising practices, and lessons learned. Click here for a PDF of the slides, and click here to access the case studies. Click here for the webinar takeaways and summary report.

On September 29, 2020, the CP AoR and the CPC Learning Network in the framework of the Global Protection Cluster Global Protection Forum 2020 hosted a webinar presenting different ways how children can be engaged as partners and leaders in child protection during the COVID-19 crisis. It presents the new ‘Children as Partners in Child Protection during COVID-19 Guide’, with the aim to assist humanitarian actors to maintain and strengthen children’s meaningful participation in their work in response to the current COVID-19 pandemic and in preparedness planning. In addition, experiences on meaningfully engaging children are presented by Artolution and Terre des Hommes to encourage participants to include child participation in their programming. Click here to view the report.

  Thursday, September 24, 2020. BRAC and the Care and Protection for Children (CPC) Learning Network at Columbia University invite you to join us for a webinar on BRAC’s Play Lab model, our flagship playful early learning program. The Play Lab is a model for play-based early childhood development that demonstrate the power of play to catalyze learning, healing and resilience in children between 0 – 6 years old living in low-resource and humanitarian settings. First launched in partnership with The LEGO Foundation in 2015, the Play Labs have reached more than 50,000 children and their caregivers in Bangladesh, Tanzania and Uganda. In 2017, BRAC introduced the Humanitarian Play Lab model in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh as part of the broader response to the Rohingya refugee crisis. The Humanitarian Play Lab is the contextualized adaptation of the Play Lab with a curriculum based on the Rohingya culture to promote healing and learning by nurturing their own identity. The webinar showcases the development, implementation, and evidence collected from the different iterations of the Play Lab. Speakers join from BRAC University’s Institute for Educational Development, BRAC International, Columbia University, the LEGO Foundation, and Sesame Workshop. Click here for a PDF of the slides, and click here for a PDF…

AfriChild and the Care and Protection of Children (CPC) Learning Network at Columbia University are pleased to announce a joint webinar series focused on late-breaking research calling attention to the realities of vulnerable children in Uganda to better inform innovative interventions that protect and advance children’s rights to protection, development, and well-being. In an effort to more meaningfully link global and national-level actors and strengthen the relevance of research, AfriChild’s researchers and Ugandan practitioners, working on the frontlines of child protection, will share the latest research on issues affecting Ugandan children today and showcase practical experiences of putting evidence into practice. Join us in the coming months for webinars exploring themes related to street-connected children; learnings from efforts to bolster child-focused research capacity in Uganda through inter-university training and collaboration; understanding linkages between parenting practices and educational outcomes; and risks and protective factors for violence against children living in residential care institutions.  The first webinar in the series will focus on street-connected children as a particularly vulnerable demographic in Uganda. The need to find a lasting and effective solution to creating safe environments for development  has attracted a variety of responses from the Ugandan government, researchers, and practitioners. Despite a number of…

  In 2018-2019, the Learning Initiative on Norms, Exploitation, and Abuse (LINEA) at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the Care and Protection of Children (CPC) Learning Network at Columbia University will jointly host a webinar series. The key theme of the series is social norms as they relate to the fields of gender-based violence, violence against children, sexual exploitation and the abuse of children and adolescents. How can we better understand what norms underlie and sustain such violence and exploitation, and how can we transform them through promoting positive norms for child and adolescent development and well-being?  Academics, practitioners, and activists will share their latest learning about the linkages between social norms and violence, exploitation, and abuse. We aim to profile the most cutting-edge research and programming to advance knowledge and understanding of these issues among members of our networks and beyond. Those interested are invited to explore the riveting and ground-breaking approach of how understanding the impact of social norms can present itself as a novel avenue to address issues surrounding the prevention of all forms of violence, exploitation and abuse of children and adolescents. Here are the upcoming webinars as well as recordings of past…

December 16, 2019. The structure of child protection programming during humanitarian emergencies is based upon the principle of increased risk of violence. Humanitarian programmatic interventions often use the same models for armed conflict and natural disasters. Little is understood on how they may differ, and the bulk of the current evidence focuses on situations of armed conflict. This webinar presented a conversation between practitioners from UNICEF and IFRC and researchers from London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Columbia University on the interaction between natural disasters and violence. It presented research findings from a global systematic review on the pathways between natural disasters and violence against children, discuss innovative programming in the Asia/Pacific region to prevent sexual and gender-based violence during natural disasters and discuss areas of development for knowledge and programming.   Moderator: Sonia Rastogi, Gender-Based Violence Knowledge Management Specialist, UNICEF Speakers: Runjini Raman, Senior Protection, Gender, and Inclusion Officer, IFRC Ilan Cerna-Turoff, Ph.D. researcher, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine Hanna-Tina Fischer, DrPH researcher, Columbia University

Wednesday, Oct 24, 2018 09:00 AM - 10:00 AM EDT UNICEF’s Office of Research is a dedicated independent research arm for UNICEF located in Florence, Italy. A large portion of the evaluation work done in the office focuses on Government supported cash transfer programs and their impacts on wellbeing of families, women and children. This webinar reviews some of the new and ongoing work conducted under the Transfer Project, a multi-organizational research and learning initiative, presented by Social Policy and Humanitarian specialists Amber Peterman, Tia Palermo and Jacob de Hoop. The first presentation summarizes findings from recent reviews published on understanding linkages and impacts of cash transfers and social safety nets on intimate partner violence and violence against children in low- and middle income settings. The second presentation covers integrated social protection (cash plus) approaches and violence reduction, with a focus on the Government of Ghana’s LEAP 1000 program’s impacts on intimate partner violence, and pathways of economic security, intra household conflict and women’s empowerment. The third presentation focuses on cash transfer programs supporting the school participation of displaced Syrian children in Jordan and Lebanon and explore impacts on child education, labor and wellbeing. The presenters touch on research and policy lessons as well as new research efforts in the areas of cash…

As debates about immigration roil the national political debate in the United States, the CPC Learning Network hosted a webinar to discuss the mass exodus of unaccompanied children and families from the Northern Triangle countries of Central America: El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.  Topics included country conditions driving continued migration, the dangers encountered while journeying through Mexico, detention practices on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, and challenges to securing protection in the U.S. The webinar featured four speakers: Eric Hershberg and Dennis Stinchcomb, of American University’s Center for Latin American & Latino Studies (CLALS) and authors of Unaccompanied Migrant Children from Central America: Context, Causes, and Advocacy Responses; law professor Jayesh Rathod, director of the American University Washington College of Law’s Immigrant Justice Clinic; and Elissa Steglich, a law professor at the University of Texas Law School and board member of the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights. The webinar is of particular interest for advocates and others working on behalf of these new arrivals but also for those advocating for children in areas around the world. The webinar took place on November 2nd, 2017. Download the presentation slides here.

Systems strengthening is becoming a dominant paradigm for many child protection actors. In spite of prevailing support, the conceptualization of a "systems strengthening approach" remains an area of continued discussion, contestation, and consensus building. Various studies have indicated ongoing challenges in implementing and realizing systems strengthening approaches in practice.  Co-hosted by the Alliance for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action, whose Systems Strengthening and Disaster Risk Reduction Task Force was co-led by the Care and Protection of Children (CPC) Learning Network and Plan International, this webinar presented key learning and considerations for practitioners who want to think about what "child protection systems strengthening" might mean for those working in humanitarian settings. Presenters included Pia Vraalsen, an associate at Child Frontiers, and Mark Canavera, associate director of the CPC Learning Network. The webinar took place on June 15, 2017.

The Measuring Separation in Emergencies (MSiE) project is an inter-agency initiative funded by the USAID Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance and co-ordinated by Save the Children, in partnership with Columbia University in New York, on behalf of the Alliance for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action. The project is guided by an inter-agency Advisory Panel. The overall aim of MSiE is to strengthen emergency response programs for unaccompanied and separated children through the development of a suite of practical, field-tested methods to assess of the scale and nature of separation in emergencies. The project team recently completed two pilots to evaluate the performance of these tools. The first pilot took place in the Tigray region of Ethiopia. Over six months in 2016, the research team implemented a community-based monitoring system as part of a response to the drought and famine affecting the area. The second pilot took place in the Sud region of Haiti. In early 2017, the team implemented a population-based estimation survey following the devastation of Hurricane Matthew. The CPC Learning Network’s Beth Rubenstein and Matt MacFarlane hosted a webinar discussing the Measuring Separation in Emergencies (MSiE) project on Friday, June 9th, 2017. The presenters shared an overview of the project,…