COVID-19 Update: Message from the Board of Trustees

Dear EECERA friends,
These last months have given all of us personal and professional challenges that have demanded extraordinary reserves of energy, creativeness, resilience and compassion as we have navigated life during this ever-developing COVID pandemic. We hope you have managed to stay well and safe during these tough times but accept that many of you will have been afflicted directly by the virus and may still be in recovery. Our hearts are with you all as we reflect on these exceptional times and try and look ahead to a brighter future.
At EECERA we are mourning the loss of our conference this year and the joys of our international friendships and the companionship that it provides. We are pleased to tell you that the Zagreb conference will go ahead with a year’s delay on 7-10th September 2021 thanks to the sterling work of our Croatian colleagues. More information about that will be published shortly.
Social distancing and isolation is such an alienating requirement but we accept it is a vital necessity for now. We have been working hard over the summer to find ways of responding to this reality and make real our EECERA spirit of amity across borders and boundaries while keeping our community safe. We know we cannot replace our annual face to face gathering but as an alternative we are planning to offer an online meeting for our EECERA community on 27-28th October 2020. We are calling this new event an EECERA ‘Convocation’ and it will offer a 2 day virtual meeting space for sharing narratives from children, parents, practitioners and policy makers about their COVID experiences. Details about this new event will shortly be published but we hope it will offer an inclusive and accessible space for exchange and support for our world-wide early childhood research community.
In this way, we hope to be able to meet with you through this appropriately distanced but deeply connected way as this most difficult year draws to a close and we help each other to create new and better days ahead.
Warmest
Chris Pascal, Tony Bertram, Jóhanna Einarsdóttir, Julia Formosinho, Irene Gunning, Maelis Karlsson Lohmander, Eleni Loizou, Margy Whalley
EECERA Trustees