In February of 2025, we gathered to celebrate ten years of work by the Salud Mesoamerica Initiative, a strategy that has enabled us to strengthen maternal and child health care for the most vulnerable populations in eight countries: Belize, Guatemala, Panama, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and the state of Chiapas in Mexico.
Early childhood is a crucial period for human development. It is during these initial years—even before birth—that the foundations for lifelong learning, health, and well-being are established.
Parenting, like life, is dynamic and demands constant adaptation. Let’s just think about our parents’ childhoods: they were very different from ours, and the childhood of a child born in 2025 will be even more so. Many of the challenges the region must address around early childhood have evolved over the years. But there are also long-standing issues that still require new approaches and strategies. That is why creativity and innovation are essential to identifying the best ways to support young children from the very start of their lives.
For decades, technology has been promoted as a solution to educational challenges in Latin America and the Caribbean, with early enthusiasm suggesting that digital tools could revolutionize access and learnings. However, real-world implementation has revealed mixed results, with a lack of pedagogical integration and infrastructure hindering their impact. As artificial intelligence (AI) emerges as the next frontier in education, the digital transformation of education presents both opportunities and risks.
In this Technical Note, we document the unique experience of the state of Pernambuco in restructuring its School Management Training Program (Progepe), adopting the Certificate in Education Finance (CFE) from Georgetown University as its methodological framework. For the first time, the course included educational finance modules, and the study aimed to analyze the profile of the future school managers participating in the program, as well as their perceptions and prior and post-training knowledge regarding education funding at national, local, and school levels.
The prevalence of disability is projected to increase from 15 percent to 20 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean according to Inter-American Development Bank’s (IDB) estimations. As a multilateral organization focused on improving lives regionally, the IDB works with countries to remove barriers to the participation of the more than 80 million people with disabilities in the region. A recent publication,
Women-led businesses are a strategic driver of economic growth in Latin America and the Caribbean. Not only do they generate employment and foster innovation, but they also contribute to more sustainable business models. Despite their importance, however, their full potential remains untapped. Limited access to financing, essential inputs, and strategic markets, among other challenges, continues to hinder their growth.
The first 1,000 days of a child’s life—from pregnancy through age two—are critical for development. A vast body of scientific evidence shows that experiences during this period have a lasting and profound impact on health, learning, growth, and overall well-being. Yet over the past decade, most attention has focused on these early 1,000 days, leaving another equally important stage in the shadows: the next 1,000 days, from ages two to five.
The 2021 World Report on Hearing from the World Health Organization estimates that by 2050, nearly 2.5 billion people will have some degree of hearing loss, and 700 million will require rehabilitation. Hearing-related disabilities can be prevented if the condition is detected early and appropriate interventions are implemented.