Together for the Early Years
The social structure and the position of the child has changed fundamentally in Switzerland over the past few decades. Children up to the age of 12 are a significant part of the population, being over a million in Switzerland as of today.
The social structure and the position of the child has changed fundamentally in Switzerland over the past few decades. Children up to the age of 12 are a significant part of the population, being over a million in Switzerland as of today.
Even though an important basis was created with the ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, children have neither political rights nor a lobby that publicly stands up for their interests and needs with a coordinated voice. State regulation and support for childhood primarily affects school education and child protection. Outside of formal (school) education, education, care and upbringing of the child from birth remain primarily a private matter of the family and a matter of civil society organizations. There is no broad access to affordable and high-quality childcare offers.
In addition, there is a lack of coordination of activities and systematic cooperation, as well as a common appearance and the transfer of scientific, practical and political knowledge of the various organizations. For this reason, representatives of civil society organizations initiated the establishment of a joint alliance in 2019, as the position paper of Alliance Enfance explains.
Prof. Dr. Sonja Perren, who had been a member of the globegarden advisory board until the end of 2019, was elected to the board of the new alliance as president of the Swiss Society for Early Childhood Research (SSECR). As a collective member of the Alliance Enfance, globegarden will campaign for its vision, just as globegarden has for many years been promoting the topics of “education, care and upbringing”, “equal opportunities”, “anti-discrimination” and “child protection” as well as the transfer of knowledge from research and practice to politics.
Source: Position paper of the Alliance Enfance
