Week 8 Blog

One of the consequences of learning about the international early childhood field is the ability to know how the professionals in this field in other countries are doing and the strategies they are using in helping the development of the children.

It’s also an opportunity to be able to liaise with other professionals in order to share their experience with us.

The opportunity to know the services that are available for the children in need and some of the ways the professionals in this field could be of help.

A big thank you to all my colleagues for your contribution to my knowledge in this course for sharing your experience. As you continue your studies the Lord will crown your effort with success in Jesus name.

UNESCO

UNESCO 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. I was able to find some information about access and equity in early childhood education on their website which are some of the issues we have been discussing about in this course and related to my professional goals.

The 1990 Jomtien Declaration for Education for All stated that learning begins at birth. A decade later, the 2000 Dakar Framework for Action reaffirmed the importance of early childhood by including the development of early childhood care and education as the first of its six main goals.

Participating countries committed themselves to “expanding and improving comprehensive early childhood care and education, especially for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children.” Governments were particularly urged to expand equitable access to quality early childhood services underscoring the importance of instituting policy in favor of the poor.

Countries often promote alternative services for poor children with limited or no access to mainstream early childhood services which can be cost-effective and pedagogically innovative, but often raise concerns about sustainability and quality.  In cases where the government has limited resources, a pro-poor policy can redistribute resources by reducing state support for the more privileged.

Central governments must ensure an equitable distribution of resources among different populations and especially those who live in the most disadvantaged regions. This approach aims to expand access without creating serious regional inequities. However, where there is universal provision for a certain age group while the overall enrollment in other age groups is low, this policy can create inequity.

Privileged children of the target age group benefit from state investment, while poor children of non-target ages receive scant government attention. A policy of universalization with targeting can minimize inequity where governments aim for universal access among the target age group, but simultaneously priorities the poor.

Sharing Wed Resources

On Harlem Children Zone website I opened a section where they have there result and I was able to get some information about some of the issues we've been discussing in this course. This has really opened my eyes to see how one can actually get parents involved in their children's education as early as possible. Early Childhood As researchers confirm that the early-childhood years are key to building a strong foundation for future educational success, HCZ has been bolstering its work with children and families in these critically important first years. Like all of HCZ’s programs, our early childhood programs provide their services free to the public. The Baby College® The Baby College offers a nine-week parenting workshop to expectant parents and those raising a child up to three years old. Among other lessons, the workshops promote reading to children and verbal discipline over corporal punishment. Over the past two years, more than 870 people graduated from The Baby College. The Three Year Old Journey The Three-Year-Old Journey works with parents of children who have won the HCZ Promise Academy charter school lottery. Held on Saturdays over several months, it teaches parents about their child's development, building language skills and parenting skills. GET READY FOR PRE-K The Get Ready for Pre-K program brings in new Gems students before the start of the school year. The six-week summer session runs for extended hours during weekdays like the regular Gems program, helping children acclimate to the new schedule and readying them to start school in the fall. Harlem Gems® Harlem Gems is an all-day pre-kindergarten program that gets children ready to enter kindergarten. Classes have a 4:1 child-to-adult ratio, teach English, Spanish and French, and run from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. HCZ runs three pre-kindergarten sites, serving 200 children. Of the 190 four-year-olds that entered the Harlem Gems in the 2009-2010 school years, 16.5% had a school readiness classification of delayed or very delayed. By the end of the year, there were no students classified as "very delayed" and the percentage of "advanced" had gone from 21.3% to 41.6%, with another 6.8% at "very advanced," up from 2.1%. 99.5% of students attained a school readiness classification of average or above.

Global Children’s Initiative

Early Childhood development Goals- • Building a unified science of health, learning, and behavior to explain the early roots of lifelong Impairments. • Leading the design, implementation, and evaluation of innovative program and practice models that reduce preventable disparities in well-being. • Catalyzing the implementation of effective, science-based public policies through strategic relationships and knowledge transfer. • Preparing future and current leaders to build and leverage knowledge that promotes the healthy development of children and families and brings high returns to all of society. Priority The first priority is to adapt the successful work the Center has conducted in the United States for a broader range of strategically selected audiences, in an effort to energize and reframe the global dialogue around investments in the earliest years of life. To achieve this, they plan to educate the leadership of key international agencies, publish and disseminate papers to establish a strong scientific framework for global work, and conduct systematic communications research to identify the most effective ways to translate the science of child development for global policymakers. The second priority is to generate and apply new knowledge that addresses the health and developmental needs of young children in a variety of settings. Initial projects that are in various stages of planning, fundraising, and implementation. The Center also plans to convene research forums to facilitate collaboration among a wide network of scholars globally to share findings and co-develop publications.Building Broader, More Diverse Leadership Capacity in Research and Policy. It focuses on building a sustainable infrastructure to support the productive engagement of Harvard students and faculty in a diversity of global settings. The second dimension focuses on developing opportunities to provide leadership training for individual researchers, policymakers, and institutions, primarily in the majority world. The article is an eye opener to see what is being done in order to help the workforce and the society as a whole in a diversity of global settings.

The Harlem Children's Zone Project

Harlem Children's Zone operates range of programs in order to help the children have good education in order to help the children and their families live successfully. HCZ also help the society at large for sustainable economy. It is Called "one of the most ambitious social-service experiments of our time," by The New York Times, the Harlem Children's Zone Project is a unique, holistic approach to rebuilding a community so that its children can stay on track through college and go on to the job market.The goal is to create a "tipping point" in the neighborhood so that children are surrounded by an enriching environment of college-oriented peers and supportive adults, a counterweight to "the street" and a toxic popular culture that glorifies misogyny and anti-social behavior. In January 2007, the HCZ Project launched its Phase 3, expanding its comprehensive system of programs to nearly 100 blocks of Central Harlem. President Barack Obama has called for the creation of "Promise Neighborhoods" across the country based on the comprehensive, data-driven approach of the HCZ Project. The HCZ pipeline begins with The Baby College, a series of workshops for parents of children ages 0-3. The pipeline goes on to include best-practice programs for children of every age through college. The network includes in-school, after-school, social-service, health and community-building programs. The pipeline has, in fact, dual pathways: on one track, the children go through their Promise Academy charter schools; while on the other track; we work to support the public schools in the Zone, both during the school day with in-class assistants and with afterschool programs. For children to do well, their families have to do well. And for families to do well, their community must do well. That is why HCZ works to strengthen families as well as empowering them to have a positive impact on their children's development. HCZ also works to reweave the social fabric of Harlem, which has been torn apart by crime, drugs and decades of poverty. The two fundamental principles of The Zone Project are to help kids in a sustained way, starting as early in their lives as possible, and to create a critical mass of adults around them who understand what it takes to help children succeed. The HCZ Project began as a one-block pilot in the 1990s, then following a 10-year business plan, it expanded to 24 blocks, then 60 blocks, then ultimately 97 blocks. The budget for the HCZ Project for fiscal year 2010 is over $48 million, costing an average of $5,000 per child. Like all HCZ programs, those of the HCZ Project are provided to children and families absolutely free of charge, which is made possible by the support of people like you. The project is emphasizing on the importance of laying a strong foundation in early childhood and that show that a range of early interventions can successfully put children on the positive path in order to prevent them from having poor outcome later in life. HCZ website is full of information which makes it, a good resource for professional in this field to get some information on how they are helping children, what they do and how they are including the parents and society as a whole in what they are doing to help the children. It would really go a long way if they could have a program that support families may be in terms of education in order to strengthen them to be able to help their children.

China and Chilhood Poverty

It is quite interesting to know that China’s population is 1/5 of world’s population. The Minimum Living Standards is quite too small to meet basic need like shelter, food, education, health and its only covers 23% of poor urban households. A lot of people find it difficult to pay for their children’s basic school fees. Another insight I gained is that China's transition from a centrally planned to a globalized market economy has helped reduce chronic poverty and disadvantage, but also created new forms of vulnerability and poverty. By 2001 5 per cent of China's population lived below the national poverty line. Rural poverty is estimated to have fallen from 250 million in 1978 to 35 million in 2000 and from 30.7 per cent of the population to 3.7 per cent according to official statistics.

Sharing Web Resources

Harlem Children Zone (http://www.hcz.org/index.php/issues) is the organization that I’m studying. The main project of HCZ is to address the needs of children in need. HCZ believes that the country cannot just rely on programs that save dozens or even hundreds of these children. That is why we created the comprehensive Harlem Children's Project - to address the needs of thousands of children. Today, our organization helps over 10,000 children a year, and talks to other communities about creating like-minded programs at scale to address the needs of their children. What stood out to me is their motto that says “Doing whatever it takes to educate children and strengthen the community”. I think this is very important because children are the future of any society and one should be able to do all it takes to bring up a child because it is actually an investment to bring up a child anyhow we look at it.