I am writing from Budapest, Hungary, from the International Step by Step Association Conference on Early Childhood Education and Democracy (link). I have been here for the last several days with our colleagues Christine Chaille and Frank Mahler, who designed HHI’s curriculum and are affiliated with Portland State University. This conference, the people, the amazing work that is being done around the world and simply the stunning location of Budapest, have all been a treat. The opening reception of this conference was hosted at the Hungarian Parliament, the most beautiful and opulent building I have ever had the privilege of visiting.

I must admit that when I learned about this conference, I was excited about all of the fascinating people and programs I would learn about and I encouraged Christine and Frank to help me design papers to submit in hopes that we could somehow present about HHI’s important work to this international group working on early childhood issues. I was honored and a bit astounded, to find that all three of our papers were accepted here and we were eagerly invited to present HHI amidst the likes of representatives from the global world leaders in early childhood development, Country Ministers of Education, the World Forum, and papers regarding early childhood work/research of Harvard University, UNICEF supported programming, and so much more.

We just completed our 3 papers all about the creation, success, design and future applications of HHI and I am delighted to report that we were received with great interest and some new potentials are now in discussion. I will hopefully have more news about all of this to share with you soon.