I watched the podcast about Maysoun Chehab. She works with early childhood practitioners, policy makers and the Arab Resource Collective (ARC) community. ARC is a not-for profit non-governmental organization based in Beirut, Lebanon. She helps raise awareness about early childhood care, early childhood development, and child rights. She also trains early chidhood caregivers on best practices and produces Arabic resources for parents and teachers on issues related to early childhood.
According to Maysoun, her most rewarding project she worked on was a psychosocial support project that took place in July 2006. A lot of young children were affected by the war that lasted for 30 days. 126 primary schools were destroyed. Families, teachers and young children needed support. After the war, they went into the affected villages and implemented psychosocial projects where trained parents and teachers emotional and social reactions that children would have in post conflict situations. The most successful part was targeting parents and teachers to help support children by training them for 6 days on coping techniques and strategies that supported themselves and children. Afterwards the parents and teachers were more confident in dealing with young children.
I have yet to hear back from Maysoun, so I researched information regarding equity and excellence from Harvard University’s “Global Children’s Initiative” website. In association with the Global Children’s Initiative, the Center on the Developing Child is beginning the Núcleo Ciência Pela Infância. This is the center’s first major program outside the boundaries of the U.S. In partnership with native experts, this project targets child health and development to assist in the development of greater policies and bigger investments that can help benefit young Brazilian children and their families. The organization aims to construct a program full of Early childhood development scholars as well as translate and communicate the organization’s goals and resources to a Brazilian audience. They also hope to build leaders in the field by providing training for policy makers.
While knowledge and research has been developed in many developing countries, there has been little evidence that is made available on early childhood development in sub-Saharan Africa. In response to this, a combined effort to evaluate the outcomes of an continuous anti-malaria initiative on children’s development in Zambia. It is believed that their work will not only improve comprehension of child development in this context but also help develop necessary interventions towards improved outcomes in a rapidly changing developing world.
The last insight I have gained would be how science research is showing that investments in early childhood and in healthy life course for young people in hardship have a social and an economic impact. Theresa Betancourt, a Center-affiliated faculty member designs invertventions for parents and children in Rwanda. For example, even with strong antiretroviral therapy made available to them, many HIV-infected parents in Rwanda see their diagnosis as a death sentence rather than a chronic illness, like diabetes, that they could live with and still be great parents. She encourages outside interest in doing family-based interventions with groups experiencing other forms of adversity, such as extreme poverty or communal violence.
All three of these programs not only work with young children, but they also include the child’s families.
References
http://developingchild.harvard.edu/index.php/activities/global_initiative/applying_the_science_of_early_childhood_in_brazi/
http://developingchild.harvard.edu/activities/global_initiative/zambian_project/
Lawton, M. (n.d.) Studying the Effects of Global Adversity, Two Generations at a Time. Center of Developing Child. Harvard University.
No comments:
Post a Comment