Policy Brief #1

• Author: WHO (World Health Organization)
• Policy Arena: Childhood overweight / Nutrition
• Purpose: to increase attention to, investment in, and action for a set of cost-effective interventions and policies that can help Member States and their partners prevent continued increase in overweight in children and ensure that the target is met
• Generic table of content
  • Current children overweight situation in number
  •  Health problems related to child overweight
  •  Global target by 2025
  • Examples of interventions for reducing the risk of unhealthy weight gain in childhood
  • Actions that can drive progress in ensuring no increase in childhood obesity
  •  Suggested policy actions
• Thoughts: This policy brief is taking childhood obesity seriously, as the number of overweight children worldwide increased from 32 million to 42 million between 2000 and 2014, especially for children under 5 years of age. This policy brief not only focuses on issues on how mothers should feed their children responsibly, but also focuses on first 1000 days of a woman’s pregnancy to her child’s second birthday. For example, WHO suggests that local community health workers or health services should provide support in the pre-pregnancy and postnatal period for exclusive breastfeeding until 2 years of age and beyond with appropriate complementary feeding, because it is seen that breastfeeding and good maternal health and nutrition had shown to reduce the risk of children becoming overweight. This policy brief implicates several platforms such as governments, NGOs, international agencies, health services and retailers that will eventually play an important role in the intervention of childhood overweight.
• Link : http://www.who.int/nutrition/topics/globaltargets_overweight_policybrief.pdf?ua=1

Policy Brief #2

• Author: Silke Staab, Researcher Specialist at Research and Data section (UN Women)
• Policy Arena: Gender equality, Child Development and Job Creation
• Purpose: To discuss different mechanism for financing, delivering and regulating ECEC (Early Childhood Education and Care) service and highlights promising avenues for realizing 3 dividend (1. Facilitating women’s labour force participation 2. Enhancing children’s capabilities and 3. Creating decent jobs in the paid care sector)
• Generic Table of Content
  •  Summary of ECEC
  • Types of early childhood education and care services
  • Policies: option for funding and delivering ECEC services
    • The education / care divide
    • Who pays? Public funding vs. fees
    • How money should be spent? Direct investment in service delivery vs. parental subsidies
    • Who delivers and responds? State, market and community-based provision
• Thoughts: Usually, when we talk about early child education, we often focus only on children. However, this policy brief specifically examines the implication for women, as mother and childcare workers who have a huge stake in this issue. Increasing numbers of childhood education and care services increases number of job (increases the economy), enhances children’s physical and cognitive development, and facilitates women’s labour force participation. In order to do so, government invest directly in service or provide subsidies to parents. However, in countries such as Ethiopia, Serra Leone and many of the Arab States, where funding are provision are entirely left to the private sector, ECEC coverage tends to be low, and better-off urban families benefits the most, and children from poorer families are less exposed to quality education. Therefore, in order to enhance the 3 dividend mentioned above, ECEC should entirely be left to public sector, in order to give equal opportunities to all.
• Link: http://www.unwomen.org/-/media/headquarters/attachments/sections/library/publications/2015/unwomen-policybrief02-genderequalitychilddevelopmentandjobcreation-en.pdf?la=en&vs=713

Policy Brief #3

• Author: OCED
• Policy Arena: Business / Entrepreneurship
• Purpose: Promoting innovative entrepreneurship, as number of start-up has decline in Korea.
• Generic Table of content:
  • What is the issue?
  • Why is this important for Korea?
  • What should policy makers do?
• Thoughts: Recently, number of start-up rates has drastically decreased in Korea, while between 2006-13, it was above the OECD average. In order to overcome the negative start-up rate, government of Korea has introduced several provision, such as “Act on support of female-owned businesses”, “Young Entrepreneurs Start-up Academy”, and many more. However, it is difficult for SMEs to grow and survive in Korean industries and that, mainly because of the low levels of innovative entrepreneurship, which is crucial to increase productivity levels in the small business sectors. Therefore, I strongly agree that 1. Improving entrepreneurship and financial education as well as mentoring and coaching, especially among women and young people, 2. Giving second chance for non-fraudulent entrepreneurs, 3. Pursuing policies to diversify financing instrument for start-ups and SMEs, 4. Focusing venture capital on start-ups by facilitating easy-stage IPOs in the KOSDAQ and KNOEX markets, 5. Taking further steps to jumpstart the M&A market and 6. Easy entry regulation, in particular in service sectors will encourage SMEs to grow in Korea.
• Link: http://www.oecd.org/policy-briefs/korea-promoting-innovative-entrepreneurship_EN.pdf