Early Childhood Development in Urban Poor Locales in Colombia: Tensions and Liberation of Local Perspectives

In recent years, Early Childhood Development (ECD) has become a policy concern in Latin America. Despite the great efforts to provide comprehensive ECD services for children in poor locales, these services are still far from the local realities and focused on deficiencies in these marginalized contexts instead of the potentialities that they can offer. This research is an attempt to explore the ways in which ECD policy framework in Colombia influences local practices in a context of urban poverty in Soacha a town near to Bogotá. The study draws on empirical evidence policy makers, teachers, caregivers and children as well as secondary data to argue that policy framework in Colombia promotes a Western ECD model that contrast with the actual experiences of communities in urban poor locales. Accordingly, the paper teased out the power/knowledge relations embedded in the ECD field in Colombia by uncovering the key policy assumptions on issues of universalism, quality and family strengthening. Simultaneously, is illustrated its influence in program’s implementation and the varied intersections with economic and cultural issues of childhood and childcare in this context. The findings revealed that beyond these discursive practices, people in contexts of urban poverty navigate within them developing coping and resilient strategies as counter narratives to the dominant ECD framework.