Author: Nola Jones

Big ideas don’t seem to come from the Cobb County School District headquarters’ gymnasium-style conference room. There was no visible startup hoodie, no cold brew on tap, and no exposed brick. Just teachers, some obviously anxious, others strangely composed, awaiting their eight minutes in front of a panel of judges who have the authority to approve the projects they have been working on for months in their classrooms. However, observing Cobb Tank in person gives one the impression that something more significant than a school function is taking place. The district’s yearly innovation grant competition, Cobb Tank, is based on…

Ralph Sicuro was unprepared for it. The BlackRock Foundation’s recent announcement was met with equal parts shock and relief, according to the president of Pittsburgh Fire Fighters, IAFF Local No. 1, which represents about 700 city firefighters. “They were all very excited and very surprised that a large organization such as BlackRock would be so generous,” he stated. That surprise feels telling because generosity of this magnitude still takes working families by surprise, not because the gift was out of the ordinary. The figures are fairly simple. 586 children of Pittsburgh firefighters received $586,000 from the BlackRock Foundation, which seeded…

Around 2018, something changed in Morocco. Silently, in dusty rural communities where preschool classrooms were scarce and mothers had to travel hours for basic maternal care, rather than loudly and with dramatic announcements that made headlines across the globe. Seven years after the Kingdom placed a wager on its youngest citizens, that wager has been acknowledged in significant places. The 79th OMEP World Assembly and World Conference, which will take place in Rabat in July 2027, will bring together researchers, policymakers, and early childhood educators from more than 70 nations. It’s an amazing moment, and it’s probably well-deserved. The World…

The fact that Poland will host the world’s most significant conference of early childhood educators in July has a subtle significance. Not subtly noteworthy in the sense of a diplomatic press release, but truly significant in the sense that the location occasionally carries weight that no agenda item could. Poznań, a city in western Poland with broad boulevards and a self-assured sense of its own history, is getting ready to host the 78th OMEP World Assembly and World Conference, which will bring delegates from all over the world. The event, which takes place from July 13 to July 18, 2026,…

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…