Samoa's Minister of Finance, Mulipola Anarosa Ale-Molio'o will co-chair a high-level regional forum on Early Childhood Development (E.C.D.) which will be held in Fiji in two weeks time.  

With the conference guided by the theme "Building a Resilient Blue Pacific Through Early Childhood Development", the forum will have delegations from 15 Pacific Island states gathering in Fiji to discuss early childhood, as a critical component of building resilience to climate change, natural disasters and other emergencies. 

The forum is organised by Pacific Regional Council for E.C.D. and is supported by UNICEF with funding from the Government of New Zealand.

According to a statement issued by the Council, the high-level forum will be attended by Ministers, Permanent Secretaries or their representatives from the Ministries of Education, Finance, Health, and Social Welfare from 15 countries: Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Republic of Marshall Islands, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tokelau, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu. 

They will be joined by representatives of development partners, civil society organizations (CSOs), non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and other multilateral organizations.

The 2023 Pacific Early Childhood Development (E.C.D.) Forum will commence on 22 February and end 24 February 2023 at the Sofitel in Nadi, Fiji. It has been confirmed that a Representative from UNICEF and the Council will be in the country this week to meet with Minister Mulipola and her delegation to brief them on what the forum will focus on. 

In 2017 countries from the region called to promote and prioritise early childhood development as a key factor to each nations' development. A year later, Pacific Leaders called for a whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach to E.C.D which then led to the establishment of the Pacific Regional Council for E.C.D. in 2019. 

In the year 2020 the E.C.D. was a priority at the 2020 Forum Economic Ministers Meeting (FEMM) with a call to produce an out-of-session paper on ECD.

This newspaper understands that five different countries within the Pacific including Samoa have already started working on the E.C.D. multi-sectoral policy. Last year another four countries have commenced work on setting up E.C.D. multi-sectoral policy work and will be launching their policies this year.