Getting to Know Your International Contacts – Part 2

Again, I’m partaking in the alternative section.  I took the time to explore the site over at Harvard’s University’s “Global Children’s Initiative.”

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

Being part of the, “Global Children’s Initiative,” organization launched, the first, the Center, Núcleo Ciência Pela Infância, the major programmatic effort outside the United States.  The program aims to use the science of child health and development to guide stronger policies and larger investments to help benefit young children and their families in Brazil. The main activities the organizations engage in are:

• Building a scientific agenda and community of scholars around early childhood development;
• Synthesizing and translating scientific knowledge for application to social policy. This will include working with the Center’s longtime partner organization, Frameworks Institute, to effectively communicate the science of child development in the Brazilian cultural context;
• Strengthening leadership around early childhood development through an executive leadership course for policymakers;
• Translating and adapting the Center’s existing print and multimedia resources for a Brazilian audience.

I think it’s amazing that there is a programmatic effort for early childhood education around the world and the impact of child health and development is being seen and heard around the world globally, not just locally.  There are many videos and links to show the effort Brazil is making with their efforts to help support young children and families in early childhood education.

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

In Zambia, there is an early childhood development project, are investigating the impact of early childhood experiences based on children’s developmental, health, and educational outcomes in other countries, focusing in Africa. The ZECDP, have created a new comprehensive instrument for assessing children’s physical, socio-emotional, and cognitive development before and throughout their schooling. It’s the first assessment tool of its kind in Zambia.  I would love to see the assessment tool being used in Zambia.  The assessment tools that I use for infants and toddlers are more suitable to the toddler age group compared to the infant age group.  Collaborating with various assessment tools, it will be helpful to guide and create a new assessment tool for the young children and their development.

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

There is an entire article that supports early childhood education and the scientific frameworks that support childhood development. The purpose of the article is to build a strong foundation for healthy development within the early years of early childhood education. According to Shonkoff, Richter, Gaag, & Bhutta, social and physical environments can threaten human development that can lead to short-term physiologic and psychologist adjustments; that require immediate adaptions for long-term outcomes of learning, behavior, health, and longevity.  It shares about the various environments that play part of children’s development that have an effect of children’s health and development growth.

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2012/01/02/peds.2011-0366.full.pdf+html?ijkey=wYgaHJh7gbXlg&keytype=ref&siteid=aapjournals