Global Center for the Development of the Whole Child

Dear Friends,

The University of Notre Dame’s Global Center for the Development of the Whole Child (GC-DWC) enables societies to create pathways out of adversity for the world’s most vulnerable children. Poverty is complex. We thus utilize a whole child approach to address not only children’s education but also health and well-being, safety and protection, and social and emotional competencies.

Our work spans 26 countries, including flagship programs in Haiti and India — and combines innovative research and measurement methods with global collaborations to affect positive change in children’s lives. In Haiti, we have partnered with the Haitian Catholic Church and other partners to promote quality education for students in 340 schools. We have also invested in social enterprise initiatives, which leverage free market entrepreneurship to ensure the sustainability of education programs. In India, the GC-DWC’s Project Sampoorna is actively implementing a whole child development (WCD) model of education across 451 residential schools for children from untouchable caste and vulnerable tribal communities.

An area of significant opportunity to advance a WCD approach to development is through partnerships with faith-based organizations. Faith-based community schools play an important role in the provision of education around the world, with enrollment projected to grow rapidly in low- and middle-income countries over the next decade. To this end, the GC-DWC has created a Faith and Science Colloquium – where practitioners, donors, and academics examine how faith-based systems can be leveraged as effective and scalable change-drivers to increase equitable access to early childhood development and learning opportunities in low-resource countries.

The GC-DWC will continue to work towards its vision of a world where children, despite adversity, are able to reach their full potential, ensuring a better future for themselves and their communities. By leveraging innovative science-based approaches and a whole child development model of education, we can create more opportunities for the world’s youth to thrive and succeed.

With Best Regards,

Neil Boothby
Founding Director, Global Center for the Development of the Whole Child

University of Notre Dame