Young - donors’ investments

I think the science of early development has come progress…evolved over the past 15 some years and that really, that understanding about the synergy of health, nutrition and stimulation, the importance of the synergy on the children’s development, that knowledge evolved over time and that has in many way influenced donor communities to address children in a coherent manner, in a holistic manner rather than in a silo approach of just putting health inputs then the nutrition inputs and then education.     

That has been tremendously important, the fact that children, brain development continue after birth, prior to, this latest, new thinking has been very much of nature-versus-nurture but not kind of nurture and the interaction of nurture and nature. So definitely that brain, the brain science has kind of, really kind of reframed our understanding and how important it is those early years. 

Early child development in the social sector has been considered as a, it’s a soft sector as compared to other infrastructure, agriculture, highway, transport projects. So within the bank, or among other donors, having the science of, of early child development importance is not enough. We need, we have to come up with rates of return that’s comparable with investing in a highway or cement factory. And indeed that, that’s economics of early child development has been done. We have used the results of the positive impact of early child development programs adding on the economics dimension to make a case for why this is beneficial in the economic sense to invest in early child development. 

So, a minister of finance, when he’s receiving competing pressure from the agriculture, from the cement factory investors, and from minister of health or education, early child development indeed is a positive, has positive rates of return. And we have studies that show that it’s in the rate of two-to-one, a two dollar benefit to one dollar investment. With that kind of data, we’re able to present a case to minister of finance as they compare what is most beneficial for them to invest. So having this information has helped us to leverage more investment to early child development.