EDUCATION POLICY ANALYSIS & STRATEGIC PLANNING
CHILD-FRIENDLY SCHOOLS
GOALS
The goal of Child-Friendly Schools is to enable school systems to “operate in the best interests of the child. [Creating] educational environments that are safe, healthy and protective, endowed with trained teachers, adequate resources and appropriate physical, emotional and social conditions for learning. Within them, children’s rights must be protected and their voices must be heard.”
CLIENTS
UNICEF Headquarters, Programme Division Child-Friendly School (CFS)
Miske Witt and Associates Inc. (MWAI) is a consulting firm based in St. Paul, Minnesota, USA that works to improve educational quality internationally.
Participants and partners include UNICEF Regional Program Officers, government counterparts, university faculty, and Shirley Miske, President and Founder, Miske Witt and Associates Inc.
RESULTS
As a consultant with UNICEF Headquarters in 2009, I trained 100 regional UNICEF Education Program Officers and national government officials in Child-Friendly Schools Regional Roll-Out. In my current consulting role ( 2012-present) with Miske Witt and Associates Inc, I build capacity with 45 UNICEF Country Officers, Education Ministry professionals and university faculty in Turkmenistan, Moldova and Oman. As a result of our work, National system CFS quality standards have been established and enacted in three countries. I’ve customized monitoring and evaluation mechanisms for measuring progress toward respective standards.
MY CONTRIBUTION
As part of the Global Launch in 2009, UNICEF conducted CFS Roll-Out events in each of its seven programming regions. I was part of the technical team for the Eastern & Southern Africa Regional Roll-out, providing programmatic and operational guidance on implementation, covering a full spectrum of topics from pedagogy to costing. Currently, I provide consulting services to Miske Witt and Associates Inc. which works at country level, to design and facilitate workshops for the Omani national team on standards design, monitoring and evaluation, leadership development and systems change.
