[Music] today I'm going to be looking at how a strong start can help us build a more equal society as we celebrate 25 years of Independence we remember those magic moments in our history do you remember this one who could forget [Music] when Frank Fredericks won the 200 meters and brought home the gold medal our very first does anyone here think that Frank would agree to have his starting blocks 10 m behind the starting line or 5 m behind the starting line or 1 M behind the starting line of course not because Frank knows that
a strong start start is what you need for a success a strong start is what you need for a good finish and you know what the same thing is true in life the first thousand days of life from conception to two are absolutely fundamental for the development of a child for the child's health the child's well-being and even the child's future Prosperity the the first Thousand Days Of Life lay down the architecture of the brain the first Thousand Days Of Life are a period of growth and development and a window of opportunity that makes all
the difference to that child I'm not talking theoretically I'm not even talking as an educator I'm talking about what the latest science of brain development is telling us look at this slide based on brain Imaging which has only become possible very recently the bottom axis is the year of the child the age of the child and those colored lines are different aspects of brain development and what do we see we see that all aspects of brain development are peing and developing well before the child is 4 years old and in fact in many cases in
the first year of life you might have already known that hearing and vision the green line and the dark purple line developed very early in a child in the first year of life and the same is true of language the yellow line it develops well before a child goes to school so it was so great this afternoon to be hearing about the importance of early literacy we do need to start early but what surprised me when I saw saw this slide for the first time is that even areas like peer skills Social Development emotional development
are being established at a very young age before the child goes to any kindergarten while still at home although a baby is born with all its brain cells a 100 million no 100 billion of them the connections between those neurons are established in the first years of life and those connections come from a stimulating and caring environment if the brain is not fed and stimulated in those very early days of life and years of life we are depriving that child of a healthy development the newborn brain listen to this this is so interesting the newborn
brain uses 97% of the energy that that child takes in a four-year-old's brain is only using 44% of the energy that that child takes in so imagine what happens if a child is malnourished stress and undernourishment will mean that there is a reduced energy to develop those brain functions that you see here in this slide and what happens then we unintentionally increase the inequalities in our society from this very early start and Studies have shown us that children with poor nutrition lack of stimulation excessive exposure to violence or stress will finish fewer grades in school
will earn less and will have poorer Health than their well-nourished peers this is not acceptable and it is not something we can afford in our country we need to act now if we want to have a more equal Society if we want to ensure our children reach their full potential and become the Franks and the Saras and the nbos of tomorrow I'd like to show you a few statistics that I believe are important for our new government as they enter their own first a thousand days to consider about 10,000 infants every year are born exposed
to HIV now fortunately because we have a very successful prevention of mother-to child transmission program they will not necessarily be HIV positive but they will be exposed to HIV and we know that they and their families may need extra support we also know that 24% of the children in our country are stunted and that means short for their age due to Chronic malnutrition and remember remember what we said 97% of the energy of a child goes to brain development and they need that energy 36% of the children in our country are not living with a
biological parent not a mother not a father and in some regions this statistic is as high as 52% and this is a potential risk factor in other countries Studies have shown especially for girls Health not to be living with their mother another worrying thing is that the children who may need it most are not the ones who are going to be attending an early childhood development program such as a kindergarten and the quality of the Early Childhood programs the kindergartens and the preschools in our country are not equal a mother a domestic worker in on
corang Gava or any other informal settlement near us may have to leave her child when she goes to work with a neighbor who's caring for eight other babies they're in a room on a bed in a dark room receiving the minimal attention that's needed for physical Comfort but not the stimulation you need for brain development this is detrimental to the health and development of those children and finally what is the result of this well the result is that one in five children in grade one are repeating one in five children in grade one are repeating
this is not an efficient system but there's good news and the good news is that early interventions can make a difference this slide shows information from a study done in Jamaica and this proves that very simple programs can bring stunted children up to the development level of their nonstunted peers so that line on the top is nonstunted children and the line just below that shows you the result of this program the two components of this simple program were home visiting so a trained home visitor would go to the home of atrisk mothers with their young
infants and model good early childhood stimulation how does that mother engage with her baby the second component was a nutrition package to that family and those two simple things brought the children right up to the level of their non-stunted peers within 24 months and what I really found interesting about this slide look at that third line stimulated even children who only received the home visit improved in fact they improved more than the children who only receive nutrition so this interaction of parents with their children is critical experience literally changes the brain isn't that remarkable a
baby's environment and Care can increase or decrease the number of Connections in their brain by up to 25% in this slide you see the synapses of a newborn a one-month-old a 9-month-old a 2-year-old and an adult and where do we see the biggest change 0 to two the first Thousand Days look at the development of the brain during those first two years and not so much afterwards between two and adulthood the more connections there are in the brain the greater the brain's ability to process information and to learn so although we have risk factors here
in Namibia and we do have risk factors we have disease such as HIV we have poverty we have alcoholism we have domestic violence we have maternal depression which might be as high as 30% so although we have risk factors we also have very positive traditional child rearing practices we have breastfeeding we have resp responding to infants who are crying we have feeding on demand carrying our babies touching our babies infant massage store storytelling singing reading all of these are very positive traditional child rearing practices that develop the brain and protect our children I was recently
in Rwanda and what struck me while I was there on the RO painted on the houses in very rural areas are geometric shapes in black and white decorating the huts and you know what Young infants respond most to strong geometric shapes in black and white and these aren't expensive books from the US these are on Rural Huts in Rwanda so we know how to rear children and we know what the needs of children are relationships are among the most important experience that young children can have and they have a particularly strong influence on emotional and
social functioning remember the lines in the graph now I love this picture and it's not only because it's my granddaughter it's also Al because we see a mother responding to her crying child and what does she do she turns to look at the child she reaches out to touch the child she starts making baby talk which is universal in all societies to babies and the baby calms down we are genetically programmed to be responsive parents we are genetically programmed to respond to children in infants in positive ways and infants are genetically programmed to respond to
their parents to adults when a baby's born in a hospital with the lights and the noise and the doctor and the monitor does the baby look to the monitor no the baby finds the face of its mother a human voice a human touch so don't be in too much of a hurry to give your children tablets they need the human face we also know that children mimic and mure their parents from a very young age babies mimic and mure and parents do the same with their children and I'm not this is not only mothers fathers
also have an important role to play in this so if you want your children to listen to you if you want your children to learn from you if you want your children to follow in your footsteps don't wait to engage with them when they're six or 10 or 12 engage with your children now and I'm speaking to fathers and mothers and this develops grooves in the brain that allow for trust understanding and communication between people so Investments early Investments these early Investments at the very start of Life have a major impact and they can address
many of the challenges that we're facing in in our country inequality poverty violence Investments made later will be less effective this slide shows a very famous study done in 2007 about the rate of return on investments and we can see where it makes the most difference in the early years if we do not invest at that time we've missed the window of opportunity to influence the structure of the brain of personality of cognition and those moments actually are gone right now as a nation the Investments we are making you can see here in the slide
focus on primary secondary and tertiary education and people say perhaps they're not paying off I'm not suggesting to the new ministry of higher education that we take away from higher education but I am suggesting we need to invest more in our youngest Citizens We're neglecting these ear early years and as we saw from Jamaica we doesn't have to be necessarily huge amounts but we have to invest if we want these later Investments to yield results what must we do we have to act now we have to act decisively at a national level and a personal
level we need nutrition programs for pregnant women and for women with young children we need home visiting programs with with trained community members who can go into homes with atrisk parents young mothers teenage mothers mothers who have had HIV we need to be visiting those homes we need mother's groups where marginalized and isolated women can meet together and get the support they need from each other and we need subsidies for Quality daycare for working women and preschools for all children with special focus on the poor who need that support in this way we can ensure
that our society becomes more equal and that our children get the strongest start so they can go on and finish at a personal level I think the message to men is men love the mothers of your children the most important thing a father can do is to love the mother and then go on and engage with your baby from an early age right from the start and women avoid alcohol avoid smoking eat well seek the support of other mothers who know and recognize your role as the first educator of this child and parents enjoy your
children hug them love them kiss them cuddle them tickle them this is not frivolous this is an investment so in summary I would like to say that the flexibility and plasticity of the brain in the first years of life in those first a thousand days and its capacity to grow lays the groundwork for future success as Science magazine says here in this quote an increase in thriving children over the next 15 years would lay a strong found foundation for healthy prosperous and peaceful societies it is difficult to see how the world could end poverty and
inequality without addressing early childhood development so I celebrate our 25 years of Independence we celebrate our new government and it's the first a thousand days and I encourage all of us to celebrate and protect the first Thousand Days of our children [Applause]
