Sweden is going through a quiet but important change. It’s not the kind of news that stops the news or makes hashtags go viral right away, but it’s the kind of news that people who work in early childhood education will probably remember as a real turning point. The Swedish OMEP government committee, which is part of the World Organization for Early Childhood Education, has made a YouTube channel. That seems like a normal thing to say at first. That’s not what it means in this case.
OMEP has been around since 1948. The organization works in 67 countries, has special consultative status with the UN through ECOSOC, and is very active at UNESCO. For more than 70 years, its main goal has been the same: to protect and promote the rights of children from birth to age eight. How that mission needs to be shared has changed, first slowly and then very noticeably. Scroll for teachers. Short videos are watched by parents. Policymakers take in information in ways that work for them between meetings. OMEP is now moving with the times.
When things are like this, Sweden’s part is important. Many people say that this country produced OMEP’s first president, which makes this digital step feel like it comes full circle. It seems like the Swedish committee isn’t just following a worldwide trend; it’s going back to something fundamental and adding a new layer to a story that began in Sweden more than 75 years ago.
Take a moment to think about what OMEP does, because the YouTube launch doesn’t mean much without that background. The group works to get early childhood education supported at the highest levels of government. It has been a part of campaigns to make 2020 the UN Decade for Early Childhood Care and Education. It has been creating Education for Sustainable Development training since 2008 and runs the blog Rights from the Start. It also runs an academic journal that is peer-reviewed and published by Springer. This isn’t a small community group that posts videos of nursery rhymes. This is a global NGO that is going into a space where its audience already lives.
What digital video can do that position papers and conference proceedings can’t is what makes the YouTube channel a real step instead of just a showy one. It can show a live classroom. It can let a researcher and a teacher talk at the same time. With the same content shared on OMEP’s active Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram pages, translated and subbed, it can reach a parent in one country and a lawmaker in another in the same week. The organization has a way for people to talk to each other. YouTube fills in the blanks.
It’s still early, and calling this a change would be too hasty until we see what the channel actually makes and who it reaches. Being uncertain is a good thing. Launching a platform and keeping it up and running are two different challenges. But OMEP’s past actions show that it knows how to play the long game. Since 1952, the World Assembly has put out a declaration every year. Research projects take years to finish before they show any results. Not many people get together with the group that helped write the Convention on the Rights of the Child for no reason.
From afar, it seems like Swedish OMEP’s YouTube channel isn’t so much about getting with the times as it is about making sure that a 77-year-old mission keeps reaching new people who need to hear it. Kids’ rights never go away. This is something that the platforms that carry the argument have to do.
