Getting to Know Your International Contacts-Part 2

I explored the Harvard University “Global Children’s Initiative’ website. The information I have gained after reading the “Applying the Science of Early Childhood in Brazil” article is “As part of its Global Children’s Initiative, the Center launched Núcleo Ciência Pela Infância, its first major programmatic effort outside the United States. In collaboration with local experts, this project aims to use the science of child health and development to guide stronger policies and larger investments to benefit young children and their families in Brazil. This project represents a unique opportunity for the Center to work with Brazilian scholars, policymakers, and civil society leaders to adapt the Center’s programmatic model for the local context in order to catalyze more effective policies and programs that will, ultimately, foster a more prosperous, sustainable, and equitable society”.

The article, “Studying the Effects of Global Adversity, Two Generations at a Time” talks about HIV/AIDS and how it is affecting children and their parents in Rwanda. The article states “When humanitarian crises hit around the world, nongovernmental organizations rush into the fray, intensively focused on urgent survival needs, not necessarily on longer-term impacts that may take an even greater toll on the country and its citizens. Betancourt, who is currently studying both former child soldiers in Sierra Leone and children whose parents have HIV/AIDS in Rwanda, says that one reason NGOs may not have incorporated the latest thinking into what they are doing is that there just haven’t been enough studies done on global child mental health”.

I also read the “Zambian Early Childhood Development Project” article. It states that “While a large number of studies have investigated the impact of early childhood experiences on children’s developmental, health, and educational outcomes in developed countries, relatively little evidence is available on early childhood development in sub-Saharan Africa. To address this knowledge gap, the Zambian Ministry of Education, the Examination Council of Zambia, UNICEF, the University of Zambia, and the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University launched the Zambian Early Childhood Development Project (ZECDP) in 2009, a collaborative effort to measure the effects of an ongoing anti-malaria initiative on children’s development in Zambia”. After reading the article, I learned that malaria is still one of the leading causes of death in Zambia.

Lastly, the “Un Buen Comienzo (UBC)” “A Good Start” is a collaborative project in Santiago, Chile, to improve early childhood education through teacher professional development. The idea is to improve the quality of educational offerings for four-to-six-year-olds, particularly in the area of language development. This project is also designed to intervene in critical health areas that improve school attendance as well as socioemotional development, and it seeks to involve the children's families in their education”. After reading this article, I can see that their country is doing the same as ours; trying to do all they can to improve early childhood education.

http://developingchild.harvard.edu/index.php/activities/global_initiative/applying_the_science_of_early_childhood_in_brazi/

http://developingchild.harvard.edu/index.php/faculty_and_staff/faculty/faculty_spotlights/theresa_betancourt/

http://developingchild.harvard.edu/activities/global_initiative/zambian_project/

http://developingchild.harvard.edu/index.php/activities/global_initiative/ubc/