Big Wins and Bold Voices: Youth Advocates take on Early Childhood Development in Washington, DC
Written by Wajiha Mekki, Global Youth Ambassador
Washington, DC, is a busy city. Full of suited professionals, moving around the city researching key issues, enacting legislation, and implementing policy, you will not find a quiet day in the United States’ capital.
However, my visit seemed busier in light of the World Bank & International Monetary Fund’s Spring Meetings. This brought more people to DC; finance ministers, world leaders, and activists converged to discuss key issues.
Education and finance typically live in different worlds, but at the 2026 World Bank & International Monetary Fund’s Spring Meetings, those walls broke. As a Global Youth Ambassador, I had the privilege of learning more about how early childhood development should be a core economic priority and how young people can help make this a reality.
Abdullah Malik and Global Youth Ambassadors Meklit Abebe, Meena Khalil, Shreyaa Venkat and Wajiha Mekki at the Global Youth Ambassador event in Washington DC
Youth Voices in Early Childhood Advocacy
My time in DC began with my peers; from across the Northeastern United States, familiar and new faces from the Global Youth Ambassador community came together to discuss our passion for education and shape our story. As young people, we bring fresh perspectives that inform our understanding of early childhood development and how our experiences have shaped us into the advocates we are today.
Whether it was lived experience of relocation and navigating new educational systems, working in youth development through programmatic volunteering, or working with displaced children, all the stories shared during the event unearthed our core reasons for becoming Global Youth Ambassadors.
This motivated us to think introspectively about our community, specifically, what barriers we notice that hinder childhood development. This need, complemented by our initial why, is our leverage when engaging with decision-makers to ensure change is sustainable and tailored to the community.
We learned about some of these changes through the lens of the Act for Early Years campaign and Big Wins for Early Childhood, both of which were discussed the following day at a formal side event of the World Bank & International Monetary Fund’s Spring Meetings.
Big Wins for Early Childhood is the work of world-leading academics, published as the first-ever investment guide for government finance and planning ministers on how to make bold and lasting commitments to the early years, including universal access to health and nutritional interventions during early childhood, universal access to inclusive and quality childcare, and universal family-friendly policies.
Global Youth Ambassadors Meklit Abebe and Shreyaa Venkat at the Global Youth Ambassador event
As we explored our why, we learned the how; specifically, how we can leverage our story to elicit change. Building off of my experiences as an Education Issue Journalist, we learned how we can tailor our pitch to a variety of audiences, leading with a solutions-based approach; as attendees shared their stories as a vehicle of change, I learned that all of our experiences are valuable to supporting global achievement of Big Wins.
Whether it is financial support for policy tasks or public acknowledgment of the impact of these wins, engaging with diverse audiences helps translate the research from paper to practice worldwide.
“When we invest early, we invest in future leaders.” – Meena Khalil, Global Youth Ambassador
Attendees at the Big Wins for Early Childhood Launch Event
Big Wins for Early Childhood Launch Event
Refreshed by my conversations with my fellow Global Youth Ambassadors I was ready to learn more about the academic and political nuances of our future advocacy journey by attending the “Big Wins: Financing Early Years at Scale” event hosted by Act for Early Years, Theirworld and UNICEF. By attending, I learned the implications of the literature, and the success other countries have seen in early years investments.
With the ‘Minifesto’ in hand, subject matter experts like Professor Florencia Lopez Boo, Director, New York University Global TIES for Children and regional leaders like Yevhen Kudriavets, Ukraine’s First Deputy Minister of Education and Science brought nuance to our advocacy efforts, ensuring we have the data to back up our passions when speaking with decision-makers. Learning how to de-risk capital and carve investments as a resilience tool, I was motivated to amplify my advocacy efforts.
Attendees ranged from NGOs to academics and think tank researchers, further demonstrating that solutions do not exist in silos, nor do the stakeholders.
Liana Ghent at the Big Wins for Early Childhood Launch Event in Washington, DC
After the event, I had the opportunity to interview Liana Ghent, Executive Director of the International Step by Step Association (ISSA). This membership organisation is a champion for quality and equity for all young children and their families.
I left our conversation with many insights that have shaped how I see advocacy, especially in framing the investment in childhood development and education. Her childhood experiences, setting her up for success, and her professional observations outline many themes, but the most prominent was the role of young people as advocates and the need for them now.
Liana: “Youth advocates influence especially in terms of how we view young children’s participation and voice, so having the voice of the youth advocate hopefully can bring new ways to bring in voices of their younger siblings. Stressing how important it is to invest (in services), but also what kind of experiences would be most useful (for children).”
Global Youth Ambassador, Wajiha Mekki giving a speech about big wins at the Big Wins for Early Childhood Launch Event
Entering the event as a STEM student, enamored by the data, I left a financial policy strategist.
I am excited to learn how financial investment for the Big Wins has a lasting change that will impact generations to come – and how I and the Global Youth Ambassador network can be a part of that push.
