Getting to Know Your International Contact - Part 3

UNESCO

(http://www.unesco.org/new/en/education/themes/strengthening-education-systems/early-childhood/

The website that I reviewed was the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). This organization advocates for early childhood Care and Education (ECCE) programs that attend to health, nutrition, security and learning and which provide for children’s holistic development. Their mission is to provide international leadership to create learning societies with educational opportunities for all populations, provide expertise and foster partnerships to strengthen national leadership and the capacity of countries to offer quality education for all. Their mission is to also work as an intellectual leader.

An insight that I discovered is the fact that UNESCO genuinely cares about children who are less fortunate, especially those who are most vulnerable and disadvantaged.  This relates to my heart for children who are immigrants. I often have many Hispanic children who enroll in my school program. Often these children are disadvantaged because they do not speak any English and have to try to understand many new concepts in two different languages. This is the reason why I am in favor of all classrooms having at least one staff member who is bilingual to assist the students who are disadvantaged in the classroom. UNESCO, with the help of participating countries committed themselves to “expanding and improving comprehensive early childhood care and education”.  

I discovered that every now and then UNESCO has job vacancies. At this moment the vacancy is for a project officer. The duties of the project officer are to provide capacity development for education for all. The education sector sometimes needs extra services provided by people other than their day to day staff. They like to bring in new staff who can share their outside expertise as needed.

The UNESCO website has much valuable information to share with individuals who are interested in international advocacy. The biggest similarities between my professional goals and UNESCO mission are providing quality and equal education opportunities to children of many different cultures. That is what I try to do on a daily basis as a preschool teacher. UNESCO and I both have a certain level of advocacy that we give to the field of early child development. Of course my advocacy work is not as great as theirs but my profession goal is to increase my advocacy work so that I can be an active voice for the students that I educate.

 

Blog Responses   

Cotati Thomas-Crompton – http://cothomas-crompton.blogspot.com

Parker Swanson – http://parkerandrew.blogspot.com

Brittany Tomek – http://btomek1813.blogspot.com

 

Sharing Web Resources

The website that I chose to review during the beginning of class was The National Black Child Development Institute. nbcdi.com

When visiting the site, the outside link that I discovered was titled Engaging Families and Promoting positive health Practices. The mission of this specified project is to improve and advance the quality of life for Black children and their families, thru education and advocacy. This link shared how in America, poor nutrition practices in children and their families, and the lack of affordable and accessible healthy foods, have contributed to the rise in childhood obesity and hunger. Due to childhood obesity, Wal-Mart has partnered with nbcdi to develop a project that will enforce healthy nutrition and physical activity among Black children. There have been special activities put together in the efforts of eliminating obesity: Y's Healthy Kids Day, Come Zumba with Dad and Me, Yoga Your Stress Away, fitness event, Parent/Kid healthy Families event, and Father and Daughter Luncheon.

Unfortunately, the link that provides the newsletter would not open. I've tried on several occasions but it's not operating.

NBCDI has been dedicated to supporting the development of a high quality, accessible, affordable, and aligned system of early care and education for children's birth through age eight. During this course, the subject has seen around access, affordability, and availability of early care education for young children. NBCDI is and has support of federal, state, and local efforts to provide increasing numbers of low-income children with access to quality early education and care; efforts to create a strong and supported early childhood workforce; and efforts to promote developmentally and culturally-appropriate standards curriculum instruction and assessment that are aligned within and across the early childhood to early continuum.

My new insights that I've learned is the fact that poverty has taken on a new face. In the past poverty was pretty much one set of people or individuals but that's all changed. I believe that poverty has effected many different cultures and even now more transient families are being recognized for living in poverty. What this tells me is that educators and school systems need to be prepared for the drastic change. We need to be trained on how to met these families where they are and have resources available for them. The founder of NBCDI, Dr. DeHanay sits on a panel that works together to come up with solutions to help families who are living in poverty. Dr. DeHaney says that schools need to prepare and adjust in a non-traditional way at dealing with the new face of poverty.

Getting to Know Your International Contacts-Part 2

The center on the Developing Child at Harvard University was founded in year 2006. The center believes that healthy child development is the foundations of our world's prosperity, firm communities and social justices. Their mission is to advance the vision by the use of science to enhance the development of young children. The Children's Institute has 3 main focused objectives.

1. To refrain public discourse about the early childhood period by educating high level decisions underlying science of learning, behavior, and health;

2. To support innovative, multidisciplinary research and demonstration projects in selected countries or regions to expand global understanding of how healthy development happens, how it can be derailed, and how to get it back on track;

3. To build leadership capacity in child development research policy among individuals and institutions in low- and middle-income countries in order to increase the number and influence of diverse perspectives that are contributing to the global movement on behalf of young children.

• Early Childhood Development

For this area, the goals is to educate the leadership of key international agencies about the importance of assessing quality in early childhood environments an programs, piloting assessments to measure child development outcomes in Zambia; expanding effective intervention to improve preschool quality in Chile.

• Child Mental Health

An urgent need to identify the scope of the problem within and across multiple countries. The workers of the Harvard faculty is developing an agenda in research, education, and public engagement to address the gaps in the delivery of services

• Children in Crisis and Conflict Situations

The main goal is to work alongside of other countries with a science based approach to assess and manage the well being of children who suffer from crisis's. The focus is on immediate circumstances and long-term adaptations.

The Global Children's Initiative website is a great resource t be aware of all the Harvard University is doing to help children and communities in different countries. Issues and trends are not only taking place is the U.S., but there are other countries who are suffering and need support from their fellow countries.

Sharing Web Resources

For the past couple of weeks, I've had the opportunities to study different websites that shared information about poverty. The website that opened my eyes was the childhoodpoverty.org website. This website gave visual pictures of children who lived in poverty and shared the stories of the children's individual lives. The story about a young man who gave up his education to provide for his family touched me dearly. It gave me a clearer understanding of how deeply poverty effects the lives of children and their families. Again, for the past few weeks, I learned about how different professionals are working harder at providing funds to assist with those who are stricken by poverty. Finances, educators, and programs are very much needed in the efforts of curving poverty.

What I found controversial is when I learned that economist look at things in units or commodities. This idea did not sit well with me. Children are people and should not be looked upon as a number, unit, or commodity. Yes, I understand that economist are looking at children/childcare as a future investment but there should be a more sensitive approach to it. I believe that politicians are out for what they can get. They may say they are for children but are really out to get what they need to get the votes that they want.

The childhoodpoverty.org website helped me to understand that poverty very well does exist throughout the world. Poverty is even worse in other countries. I've always thought that the poverty in my locality was severe but I had the opportunity to see worse. Precious children working sun-u to sun-down trying to provide for themselves and their families. Children denied the opportunity to play and simply be children. Having to take on adult roles just to survive was not pleasant to view. Poverty is large and from my understanding, it's going ton take a nation to help with the elimination of poverty. The president has made a proposal to end poverty. He wants to place more money into schools, job placements, childcare, and health care. I am awaiting the day for these changes or proposal to take effect.