Pol Trias Laura Oliver Maria Nieves Matylda Szmukier Lucho Dominguez How might parents in low income communities ensure children thrive in their first five years?

Early child development is a crucial process in every person’s life. Connections developed by our brains during this period will set the foundations for learning, communication and behavior throughout the rest of our lives. We chose this subject because in our opinion it was the most challenging, we had to step out from our comfort zone, we had to learn about something completely new for us, but mostly because we all believe that the value of supporting young children it will allow us to create a powerful impact in our community.

We Learned from People: Parents from low-incomes communities from L ́Hospitalet (Barcelona), Spain Immigrant mother of 5 years old child living in Barcelona Father of 3 years old child living in Barcelona We Learned from Experts: Child development experts Pediatricians Social Workers Professional Educators We Immersed Ourselves in Context: Fundesplai in L ́Hospitalet (Barcelona), Spain Primary School in Sant Sadorní d’Anoia, Catalonia We seeked Analagous Inspiration: Parks Libraries (storytelling sessions)

WE IDENTIFIED THE FOLLOWING PROBLEMS FACED BY THE LOW-INCOME PARENTS: Offering better professional future for their children because of lack of resources (lack of money for education and extracurricular classes), lack of awareness about future job demand and work opportunities. Creating different ways of bonding and communicating with their child because some parents don´t have enough time or information or because they didn´t have close bonds with their parents neither so they don ́t know how to create these close and intimate Lack of knowledge about children development because they don ́t have enough information on that subject

How might we offer better professional future to children? How might we create bonds between parents- children? How might we teach about child development?

Selected idea we came up with is related to the following challenge: How May We help low-income parents to create close relationships and new ways of bonding with their child? Why is it important? “The main predictor of how well your child will do in school and in life is the strength of the relationship he or she has with the parent or primary caretaker. This relationship impacts the child’s future mental, physical, social, and emotional health. It can be formed at any time or at any age.” helpguide.org

Our solution: DAY-TO-DAY BONDING CALENDAR Relationships are Experiences. Distractions of daily life, such as phone or TV, and lack of time can prevent many parents from paying full attention to their child and leading to miss out daily opportunities to create meaningful experiences. As play is the best relationship builder, “Day-to-day bonding calendar” is a stimulating source of daily activities that offer plenty of ways to play and learn. Our solution is a great reminder of importance of developing secure attachment bond, and it helps parents to focus on “in the moment” and create unique experiences with their child everyday. “Day-to-day bonding calendar” is for anyone! You don´t need to be a perfect parent! Start developing new bonds with your child and give him the best start in life!

DAY-TO-DAY BONDING CALENDAR Strong Bounds between Parents and Children

DAY-TO-DAY BONDING CALENDAR Strong Bounds between Parents and Children

VALIDATION We verificated the Calendar with two parents, father and mother, and both agreed that it is an interesting product and also that they will use it.

RESULTS They agreed that it is a useful source to come up with new activities and experiences to share with their kids everyday. The calendar is a kind of guide for them with different micro-activities that generate time and space for parents and kids together in order to improve or create new bounds. In addition, they mentioned that this product is interesting to link with something digital that always remain in the cloud and they cannot lose it. They imagined it as a timeline of experiences where they can upload pictures of the activities, and the most important, the process of doing them. In terms of product design they found that it has to be personalized, because every child is different. So, they wanted the calendar to have different categories, themes, and playing guides. Finally, they think sharing the experience of using the calendar with other parents is good but it has to be optional, because maybe it becomes too competitive. To go further with the project, now it’s time to apply changes and test it again, trying to focus more on which activities are key for the calendar.

We are a multidisciplinary team of five people with diverse backgrounds coming from four different countries. We believe that the ability to keep our eyes and minds open and to connect broadly our diverse experiences will help us to bring more perspective to our thinking and to come up with some innovative solutions.