Getting to Know Your International Contacts—Part 2

The Global Children’s Initiative is a wonderful program that focuses on the health and well –being of children around the world.  On the site it is stated that “one essential, cross-cutting aspect of the Center’s approach is its commitment to work collaboratively across disciplines and institutions, drawing together the best and most creative expertise available to achieve the Initiative’s goals” (Global Children’s initiative, 2012).  After exploring the site, I learned three interesting facts.

The Global Children’s Initiative focuses on:

·         early childhood development

·         child mental health

·         children in crisis and conflict situations

As an early childhood educator, I was surprised to learn about the Global Children’s Initiative.  Since it focuses on early childhood development, this should have been a part of my resources at work.  However, I only learned about this initiative in this class.  Therefore, I am glad that continuous learning has improved my education and my understanding of outside resources.  I think that health is an important part of children’s development. Therefore, research conducted by GCI in the United States has helped to develop programs in other countries.

References

“Global Children’s Initiative” (2012) Retrieved from http://developingchild.harvard.edu/initiatives/global_initiative

Sharing Web Resources

Early Childhood:

Site: http://www.earlychildhood.com/

This is a great site for early childhood educators because it provides links for other educators to communicate and share information.  This site also has research and resources through other site links.

Early Childhood News: The Journal of Professional Development http://www.earlychildhood.com/

This site features sample articles from the print magazine for professionals who work with young children. Early childhood educators can use this site to find articles and news about current issues in Early Childhood Education.

Getting to Know Your International Contacts—Part 1

This week, I listened to podcasts.  I was also concerned about poverty in other areas.  The podcasts provided me with a lot of information that I did not realized existed in other countries.
I plan to continue listening to audio from other countries.  In my research of poverty sites, I learned that there was a high rate of poverty in India.  Since many companies had outsourced technical jobs to India, I assumed that the country was prosperous, especially with the high number of technicians in the country.  However, I learned that poverty was a serious issue. 

I have also researched India on the childhood poverty organization website.  I learned that:

About 62 million under the age of five are malnourished

34 percent of new-borns are significantly underweight

20% of the children are out of school

These are interesting statistics that show how poverty and hunger can affect a country. 

http://www.childhoodpoverty.org/

Sharing Web Resources

I have been following childpoverty.org.  This website provides statistics and information about children around the world.  The key elements of the site are that it focuses on poverty and education.  It also provides information about different countries.  I recommend this site to any educator that is interested in reading current information and research on these issues.

http://www.childhoodpoverty.org/

Establishing Professional Contacts

I have chosen to use the World Forum Foundation. The website is http://www.worldforumfoundation.org/wf/about.php .  This foundation has a radio broadcast that can help me learn how educators around the world work, and I can learn from their experiences. 

I further plan to contact other organizations such as the Association for Childhood Education International, which is located at  http://www.acei.org/.  This organization will allow me to find information from other teachers around the world, and I can learn from their practices.