 Achieving access and quality of early childhood education is one of the four pillars of focus for the OECS Program for Educational Advancement and Relevant Learning, PERL. Recently, a two-day early childhood educators' leaders forum took place bringing together key stakeholders to reflect and discuss best practices to develop implementation plans to enhance early childhood education. The forum simultaneously took place in Dominica, Grenada, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, creating a workshop of a group of over 200 early childhood leaders who are better equipped as advocates for the enhancement of early childhood education in their respective countries. National Coordinator of the OECS, Pearl Sophia Edwards-Gabriel says, enhancing the quality and equity of access to early childhood education rests upon the provision of enhanced facilities and the professional development of early childhood practitioners. Today, we are here with the leaders in the early childhood sector. We are doing a joint conference, so it's a regional conference where we are leasing with our counterparts via Zoom and basically we are here to discuss what are the issues and the challenges that are facing the early childhood unit. We are also looking at how the PERL and the funding from the PERL can provide support to the early childhood sector. And so as we move forward, we recognize that there is need for the leaders in the early childhood sector to have a space where they can come together, they can share ideas, practice and they can plan the way forward, especially with the view of having the OECS PERL support them as they move forward. Training officer at the Early Childhood Services Unit, Ruth Fabrié says, one of the plans to increase access to early childhood education is introducing early childhood education at primary schools. The whole thinking of increasing access to early childhood has been something that the government has been looking into. We are very happy that the PERL has provided us with some of the financial support required because now as you may be aware, there are number of spaces becoming available in existing infant schools because of the drop in the current intake of children, a drop in the child population. So it is a way of using existing space to provide a much-needed service. So for us, we welcome this opportunity because it allows us therefore to have more children go into some sort of early childhood facility and free up spaces at the government-run facilities which allows them now to increase the intake of younger children because as all the research shows, the most critical stage is both 2-3 and for us in St. Lucia, that is the age cohort that is least served on Island. Funded by the Global Partnership for Education, GPE, the OECS PERL seeks to increase the quality of teaching and learning in the OECS region by creating greater access to quality education for all children. The four-year program was designed by the OECS Commission in collaboration with OECS Ministries of Education. From the Communications Unit of the Ministry of Education, Sustainable Development, Innovation, Science, Technology and Vocational Training, I am Danielle Dubois reporting.