Part 2-Getting to Know Your International Contacts

From the podcast, I have been listening to Delfena Mitchell this week.  Delfena Mitchell is the director of the Liberty Children’s Home in Belize City.  She discusses the issue of child abuse in her country.  In her unique program, she handles rebuilding the lives of children who have been abused physically, mentally, and emotionally.  This issue is one that is heartbreaking to me as an EC professional.  The issue of child abuse should never be overlooked or undermined which is why I applaud Delfena Mitchell’s strive toward equity and excellence in tackling this issue.

Globally, I have learned that the Children’s Global Initiative Program at Harvard University is working on planning, fundraising, and implementation of three areas that affect the Early Childhood field globally.  They are assessing quality in ECE programs in diversity around the world. They are assessing child development outcomes related to malaria in Zambia. The third thing they are doing globally is to improve effective early intervention in Chile. These issues ultimately affect equity and excellence because educators need to be able to determine which areas of their programs need improvement, how malaria disrupts a child development, and the benefits of improving early intervention for children.  I found some of these issues to affect certain areas of the world more than others.  However, these issues are the same issues being tackled here in the U.S. locally.

Additionally, I am learning that the issue of equity and excellence is not always in the form of educational standards around the globe.  I feel that each Early Childhood program in the various states and countries have many different but similar standards of equity and/or excellence that they are fighting to improve.  Healthcare, child development, education, support systems, and early intervention help are just some of the related issues that global educators are striving to achieve excellence in.  With each lesson, I am affirming my reason’s for becoming an Early Childhood educator which is to make a difference in each of these issues.