Author: Nola Jones

After reading OMEP Aotearoa’s May newsletter, you are struck by a quiet, almost casual statement about the conference in Poznań coming at a time when children’s voices should be taken seriously as a political act. It’s the kind of thing that seems obvious until you consider how infrequently it occurs in early childhood classrooms, much less policy rooms. From July 13–18, 2026, the 78th OMEP World Assembly and Conference will take place in Poznań, Poland, with the theme “When a Child Speaks…” Korczak’s Inspirations for Education and Children’s Rights.” Polish-Jewish educator and children’s rights pioneer Janusz Korczak, who passed away…

Preschool classrooms all over Sweden have a small calendar that isn’t very striking to look at. Children congregate around it, teachers flip through it, and somehow, something rather extraordinary is taking place through that routine ritual. Based on this calendar, the Swedish branch of OMEP, the World Organization for Early Childhood Education, has developed a project that simplifies the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child so that a four-year-old can truly understand it. which is much more difficult than it seems when you think about it. The Convention is a complicated document in and of itself. Adopted in…

Tracing OMEP’s conference history over the past 20 years reveals a pattern that is hard to ignore. Quebec in 2008; Mexico City in 2007. Gothenburg in 2010. Bologna, Prague, Athens, and now Poznań in 2026. With very few exceptions, the list reads like a tour of the Global North, with sporadic stops in Shanghai or Bangkok but no real focus on the areas where the early childhood crisis is most severe, underfunded, and unseen by global policymakers. That is a serious criticism. For more than 75 years, OMEP has worked in more than 60 countries, carrying real moral weight in…

Crayon drawings taped at eye level, tiny chairs surrounding smaller tables, and the background noise of kids fighting over who gets to use the red truck are all commonplace when you walk into practically any preschool. Unless someone brings it up, you probably won’t notice if that classroom is subtly teaching kids to consider the planet they’re inheriting. OMEP’s Environmental Rating Scale for Sustainable Development in Early Childhood fills that gap between what preschools believe they are doing and what they are actually doing. With assistance from UNESCO, academics and preschools from ten different countries collaborated internationally to develop the…

Just before something changes, a certain kind of energy builds in hotel conference rooms. It’s not very loud. It doesn’t make an announcement. However, it would have been obvious to anyone who spent time in Zanzibar in February of last year, observing union representatives from all over Africa bending over shared documents and voicing their frustrations in low voices in between sessions. There’s an organization going on. Something greater than a single gathering. Something seems to be coming together around OMEP 2027, the World Organization for Early Childhood Education’s next global platform, which African countries are increasingly viewing as a…

If you know where to look, you can see that something is changing in the field of early childhood education. Although OMEP 2027 registration has not yet officially opened, rumors from regional chapters, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and West Africa, indicate that this cycle will feel unlike anything the organization has seen in recent memory. A tipping point seems to be quietly approaching, as significant events frequently do. The World Organization for Early Childhood Education, or OMEP, has been in operation for 75 years. It takes a long time to establish institutional credibility, and the organization’s 2023 Annual Report made…

It did not take place in a diplomatic hall or a chamber of parliament. It was probably a conference table in Spain, with professionals who spend their working lives considering what three and four-year-olds need to grow up to be decent people. Nevertheless, the statement on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict released by the World Organization for Early Childhood Education’s Spain chapter carried far more weight than a policy memo. It’s worth pausing to consider that. OMEP was established in 1948, most notably during the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, when the world was once again reminded of what happens…

Communities that never receive resources experience a certain kind of silence. Not the quiet of contentment, but the kind that develops gradually, year after year, as parents watch their youngest children grow through those crucial early years with little assistance. That silence has long been a reality in some parts of Argentina. For many families, early childhood education isn’t a policy debate—it’s just nonexistent due to stretches of rural distance and urban periphery. For this reason, Argentina’s OMEP Cerca Tuyo program seems like something worth considering. The World Organization for Early Childhood Education, or OMEP, has been working for many…

The most durable international alliances aren’t those formed in opulent political chambers, you realize at some point in between the paperwork and the planning sessions. They were gathered in secret by early childhood educators in Norway, Greece, Croatia, and a British non-governmental organization that just wouldn’t accept Brexit. That is precisely what OMEP UK, the World Organization for Early Childhood Education’s UK branch, has been doing. OMEP UK was already leading an Erasmus+ project with partners in several nations, advancing work that was fundamentally about something far more pressing than geopolitics: how teachers show up for very young children, at…

The fact that OMEP’s most symbolic conference of 2026 will take place in Poznań, a Polish city with its own complex memory of war and survival, while its global headquarters is located in Buenos Aires, a city that has experienced dictatorship, resistance, and a slow, hard-fought democratic renewal, is quietly significant. Even though the geography isn’t entirely intentional, it feels that way. Two cities, two hemispheres, and one unwavering conviction that kids should be treated better than what they typically receive. The theme of the 78th OMEP World Assembly and World Conference, which will take place in Poznań from July…