NORRAG has brought together 48 authors from academia, humanitarian agencies, and think tanks to produce 27 papers that showcase current evidence and offer policy directions to prioritise and protect the work and well being of refugee teachers everywhere.

En esta nota conceptual se describen los marcos, conceptos y métodos del proyecto en el que NYU Global TIES for Children (NYU-TIES) y la Universidad de los Andes están trabajando para fortalecer los sistemas de monitoreo y evaluación de aprendizaje holístico en Colombia y Perú (mayores receptores de familias de refugiados y migrantes venezolanos).

Working paper #1 from the Education Research in Conflict and Protracted Crisis (ERICC) Research Programme Consortium. This paper outlines the theoretical framework governing the studies to be deployed throughout the Consortium's lifetime.

Check out how we used multimedia alongside Sesame Workshop to combat critical challenges to the informed consent process, resulting in more active participation from families in the research.

Global TIES for Children is excited to share some initial results from preliminary research concerning fathers’ involvement in children’s development in Rohingya refugee communities in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. The research was conducted as part of the LEGO foundation-funded Play to Learn project, a partnership between Sesame Workshop, BRAC, the International Rescue Committee (IRC), and TIES to provide and understand a range of early child development services for these communities. NYU’s research unearths.


Image credit: Ante Hamersmit (@ante_kante on Unsplash)

This explainer video is focused on “Building a Science for Action”: Lessons learned and practical advice for researchers and practitioners to move the field towards building science for action. The 3EA initiative, born out of a research-practice partnership between TIES and the International Rescue Committee, aims to generate evidence and tools on what works to improve children’s holistic learning and development. This work also aims to improve the quality of program implementation and to answer the questions of what works, how, for whom, and under what conditions.

Early Childhood Development in Humanitarian Crises: South Sudanese Refugees in Uganda, Sweta Shah’s comprehensive book on early childhood development (ECD) in humanitarian crises, benefits from, and is likely to draw criticism for, its stated desire to appeal to a wide audience. Any part of this expansive work could itself be a book, which runs the risk of leaving some readers wishing for more on a particular topic. It also makes this an excellent text for those looking to be introduced fairly quickly to a wide range of issues of critical importance to improving the long-term outcomes of the tens of millions of children who are currently displaced from their homes due to conflict and disaster, and the countless more likely to be so in the future.

RTI International (RTI), a non-profit research institute, and New York University’s Global TIES for Children Center (NYU-TIES) are pleased to announce our collaboration under the LEGO Foundation’s new Measurement Initiative to develop tools to measure “Learning through Play” across age groups, settings and contexts. This initiative will provide new ways to measure Learning through Play and help researchers understand how play contributes to holistic skills development in children.

These data were collected as part of an ongoing practice, policy, and research partnership, Ahlan Simsim. Ahlan Simsim, which means “Welcome Sesame” in Arabic, is the groundbreaking program from Sesame Workshop and the International Rescue Committee (IRC) that delivers early learning and nurturing care to children and caregivers affected by conflict and displacement across the Middle East. Through a brand-new, localized version of Sesame Street and in-person direct services across Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, Ahlan Simsim reaches families wherever they are—from classrooms and health clinics to TV and mobile devices—with the vital educational resources that they need to thrive. This program, generously funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the LEGO Foundation, not only addresses immediate needs and builds a strong foundation for future wellbeing, but also has the potential to transform how the humanitarian system responds to crises around the world.

During school year 2016-2017, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) delivered Healing Classrooms remedial tutoring programming and additional low-cost, targeted Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) (SEL) interventions to children in Diffa, a region in Niger affected by recurrent Boko Haram attacks. We found that, after twenty-two weeks of program implementation, access to Healing Classrooms tutoring significantly improved students’ reading and math skills, and adding targeted SEL interventions to Healing Classrooms tutoring improved children’s overall school grades. However, we found little evidence of direct impacts of the additional targeted SEL strategies on children’s social-emotional outcomes.

We are honored to partner with the Lego Foundation, Sesame Workshop, BRAC and the IRC on this historic initiative to understand how play-based learning and support can build a future of hope, creativity, and engagement for a generation of children in some of the most challenging contexts in the world

An unprecedented half of the world’s 57 million out of school children live in conflict-affected countries, and 50% of children of primary-school-age are not attending school. In addition, the unauthorized status of many refugees and migrants worldwide is associated with experiences of social exclusion as access to employment and social services are often unavailable or constrained by host-country governments. Children and youth affected by unauthorized or refugee status are also often excluded from services to support healthy development and learning. This chapter presents a process-oriented developmental framework to guide the development and evaluation of interventions that can buffer the effects of social and political upheaval, displacement, and refugee and unauthorized status on children and youth's development. Rigorous evaluations, showing how programs mitigate the risks of displacement or refugee or unauthorized status, could yield great benefits for the fields of humanitarian aid and refugee and migration policy, making the relative dearth of such evidence even more stunning. This chapter reviews the existing literature from rigorous evaluations of interventions to address these issues, discusses the challenge of measurement of risk and protective factors in these contexts with particular sensitivity to cultural variation, as well as how to address cultural factors in the development and evaluation of interventions. The chapter concludes with specific methodological recommendations for a sound research agenda to further improve our understanding of risk and resilience in development of children and youth affected by war, displacement, and refugee or unauthorized status.

Today, Syrians represent the largest refugee group in the world. Since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in 2012, more than 5.2 million Syrians have fled the country as refugees, and about half of these are children. Most of the Syrian refugees are currently living in neighboring countries, with Turkey hosting the largest group with numbers above 3.2 million as of November 2017. Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq combined host about 2 million Syrian refugees. While the Syrian crisis, deservedly, has been covered in the news and debated in terms of its effects internationally, we lack empirical evidence of how this crisis is affecting children and families. This special issue is designed to begin to address this important gap in the literature with five new empirical studies on Syrian refugee children, focusing on their psychological and educational needs.