Getting to Know Your International Contacts—Part 3

This week I explored the UNESCO’s “Early Childhood Care and Education” webpage. while exploring this web page I read three different articles that I found were very interesting. One article that I read was
"Young women must be fully supported to take part in science, technology, engineering and mathematics education". In this article it discussed how there can be a be ways in supporting girls to stay in school and continue on to higher education. I learned that there are many Countries that girls have a high drop out rate. Another thing that I found to be interesting on this site that "8-million project aims at enhancing the capacity of the key local Teacher Training Institutions through information and communications technology (ICT) in 8 African countries" (www.unesco.org). The third thing that I found interesting from this site is that statement "There are no universally agreed criteria for quantifying ECCE quality but useful factors to consider include pedagogy materials, personnel training, service setting and parental education and involvement. Learning materials should be quantitatively, culturally and developmentally adequate and focus on child-centred interaction"(www.unesco.org).

www.unesco.org

Sharing Web Resources

The website that I chose to focus on is the National Black Child Development Institution, www.nbcdi.org. Most of the outside links are not updated. But I did find one link entitled Child Health Talk.  This article is from the spring/summer of 2015. This article was a news letter for the summer and the line up for National Black Child Development Week. There is information about language development and different books for different age groups. The president of the National Black Child Development Institution wrote a letter reminding parents how education and learning is still important during the summer. And things they could do to help there children learn throughout the summer.

http://www.nbcdi.org/sites/default/files/uploads/CHT%202015%20SpringSummer%20Edition.pdf#page=5&zoom=auto,-99,540

Getting to Know Your International Contacts—Part 2

This week I decided to find out more information about The Alberta Family Wellness Initiative which is located in Canada. "The AFWI began with the Building Blocks for a Healthy Future conference in 2007, which brought policy makers together with leading experts in brain and child development to talk about the implications of this knowledge for negative health outcomes like addiction" (http://www.albertafamilywellness.org). This website gives the public information about brain development in the early years and why it is important to try and catch a problem with development before it is too late. From this website I learned that a doctor by the name of Dr. Briggs, “ found the easiest and least expensive way to determine what children needed family intervention services was to ask their parents the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) questions” (http://www.albertafamilywellness.org). This tool reminds me of the ASQ and ASQ-SE  that we perform on the children every 6 months.  This site has information for families, law makers, health professionals, and researchers. There are many videos about brain development and why it is important to make sure that children have positive experiences early on in life. I found myself watching videos and being very informed. I would recommend this site just as a resource to have. 

http://developingchild.harvard.edu/about/what-we-do/global-work/
 

 http://www.albertafamilywellness.org

Sharing Web Resources

The website that I chose to studies is The National Black Child Development Institute. On this website there is a section entitled "What We Do". In this section the organization discuss their policies and services that they offer. This section is relevant to the work that I do in my career. My orinaztion service low income families. We offer childcare, social service, and resources. I love the idea that the organization is catered to black families, as I stated before I have never known of an organization like this before. On the site there are two sections entitled News and Events, in these two sections you can find out about events and latest news that are going on within the organization, and pertaining to local and national news. The news section is where you found it information about politicians, economist, and neuroscienctist.

Getting to Know Your International Contacts—Part 1

Unfortunately I have not been able to get in connect with outside resources. I received an email from Madagascar:

            Dear Brittany,

Thanks for reaching out to us.

You will find enclosed our last published situation analysis report of children in Madagascar, for your easy reference. Hope this will be helpful to start with. Unfortunately, Madagascar is not well advanced in terms of ECD response thus far and we are currently reviving our work in this field as Madagascar is currently transitioning out from a prolonged period of crisis. Most of the other documents (e.g. early learning development standards) are only available in French I am afraid, so not sure to what extent this would be useful to you.

Best wishes

Matthias
 
The email that I received from UNICEF Australia gave me a link to connect their early childhood Australia. I am still waiting to hear back from them. If I can not get in contact with some one I will be doing the alternative option. 

Sharing Web Resources

We were asked to pick a website to focus on throughout the remainder of the course. The website that I took interest in is The National Black Child Development Institute, nbcdi.org. The reason I took interest in this website is because I never knew about any national all black institution for early childhood. This organization is focused on the education, care, and health of black children and their families. They "serve as a national resource agency providing programs, publications, advocacy and training's related to early childhood care and education; K-12 education; health and wellness; literacy; family engagement; and child welfare"(nbcdi.org).

One thing in the in the news section that caught my attention is The Voice of America media segment. In this media piece the NBCDI President and CEO Tobeka Green speaks about the  book vending machine project in Southeast Washington, D.C. This is a project where books are put in vending machines and the children can get them for free and they get to keep the books. The program is sponsored by Jetblue airlines. So far there are only three vending machines and they are located in the poor neighborhoods where the literacy levels are low.

Establishing Professional Contacts and Expanding Resources

This week we were to contact at least two Early Childhood professionals from a different country, to establish a relationship with them and expand on our resources.  When I first looked at the assignment, I thought I am going to go for alternative number 2, which was to do research on a website. But I decided to go on the UNICEF website and send emails to Australia, Madagascar, Fiji, and South America. I choose these countries because I am interested in visiting them and getting to know more about their early childhood programs. I am now waiting to hear back from these countries that I contacted. I look forward to meeting new people from other countries and learning about their programs.