Harvard University’s “Global
Children’s Initiative”
Un Buen Comienzo
(UBC), “A Good Start”, is a collaborative project in Santiago, Chile, to
improve early childhood education. Their
goal is to improve educational offerings for four-to-six-year-olds,
particularly in language development. In
addition, the project is designed to intervene in critical health areas that
improve school attendance, as well as, socioemotional development. It also seeks to involve the children’s
families in their education.
Nucleo Ciencia Pela
Infancia (ncpi), is a collaboration between the Center on the Developing Child
at Harvard University and local experts 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.
Zambian Early
Childhood Development Project is a collaborative effort to measure the
effects of an on-going anti-malaria initiative on children’s development in
Zambia. ZECPD created an instrument for
assessing children’s physical, socio-emotional, and cognitive development
before and throughout their schooling careers.
Two rounds were piloted before the first cohort of 1,686 children, born
in 2004, was assessed between July and December 2010. In 2011, there was a follow-up with 1, 250 of
those children. A third follow-up was
planned for June through August of this year.
The data will hopefully improve an understanding of child development in
this context, as well as, identify key interventions towards improving outcomes
in a rapidly changing world.
Hi Dianne, I found your post interesting for two reasons, totally unrelated to our studies .... Firstly, my family and I nearly moved to Santiago, Chile several years ago, but changed our minds due to the high presence of pollution in the city bowl. Naturally, Zambia also caught my attention as I read up about them this week too. I first visited Zambia some twenty years ago and was struck by the extreme poverty and how run down everything was in the south of the country. Our main reason for visiting was to see the Victoria Falls and we stayed on the Zimbabwean side. At the time Zimbabwe was the up and coming African country, with wonderful education reforms and a very high literacy rate. However, with all the strife in Zimbabwe the tables have turned, Zambia is proving to be a very strong country with many foreign investors improving the quality of life in the country. It is a wonderful place to visit. Interestingly there has been a huge concern over malaria, the number one killer of infants and children in subsaharan Africa. The biggest concern is that the anopheles mosquito (the malaria parasite carrying mosquito) is showing resistance to the treatment.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading the article by Lee and Hayden, (2009) and now yours I realized yet again how looking at an issue through different lenses can paint a completely different picture and it is important to consider all sides before making a final decision or creating an action plan.
Diane, after reading your post, I realize that improvement to early childhood education is a global effort and leaders all over the world are concerned with the improvement of children. It is interesting to learn about the efforts into improvement from global leaders which confirms more similarities than differences in mankind. Only time will tell, how well thoughts and ideas will make the social change that is growing worldwide. It is my hope that impoverished families will rise above and meet or exceed the same education as modest-income and wealthy families.
ReplyDeleteHi Jody. This is the link to the podcast also located under resources or the blog assignment in week one. Enjoy!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.worldforumfoundation.org/wf/radio.php