Effect of a youth-led early childhood care and education programme on children's development and learning in rural Sindh, Pakistan (LEAPS): a stepped-wedge cluster-randomised implementation trial.

Background: In low-income and middle-income countries, an estimated 181·9 million (74·6%) preschool-aged children do not receive adequate nurturing care in health, nutrition, protection, learning, and responsive care, thus jeopardising their healthy development across the life course. Working alongside the health sector, multisectoral actions including social protection and education are necessary to achieve child health and development outcomes. Innovations are needed to expand access to high-quality early childhood care and education (ECCE) for young children and opportunities for youth development.

Challenges in humanitarian response implementation: a large-scale review of aid worker perspectives.

Aid workers offer important perspectives for understanding better the most pervasive challenges that arise when implementing emergency response programming in humanitarian settings. This large sample study provides a global review of these perspectives, derived from 4,679 applications to the National NGO Program on Humanitarian Leadership, in which aid workers were asked to respond to the following question: 'What do you consider to be the biggest challenges in the implementation of emergency response programming in today's humanitarian settings?'. Through a qualitative coding process, the research team identified 14 major challenges that were prevalent across the applicants' responses and cross-tabulated these with their demographics.

Evaluating implementation of LEAPS, a youth-led early childhood care and education intervention in rural Pakistan: protocol for a stepped wedge cluster-randomized trial.

Background: The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) highlight the importance of investments in early childhood care and education (ECCE) and youth development. Given Pakistan's large young population, and gender and urban-rural inequalities in access to education, training, and employment, such investments offer opportunities. LEAPS is a youth-led ECCE program that trains female youth, 18-24 years, as Community Youth Leaders (CYLs) to deliver high-quality ECCE for children, 3.

Parenting interventions to promote early child development in the first three years of life: A global systematic review and meta-analysis.

Background: Parents are the primary caregivers of young children. Responsive parent-child relationships and parental support for learning during the earliest years of life are crucial for promoting early child development (ECD). We conducted a global systematic review and meta-analysis to evaluate the effectiveness of parenting interventions on ECD and parenting outcomes.