Canadian Association for Young Children....Sharing Web Resources

On the Canadian Association for Young Children website, I explored the "Membership" link and it explained the membership fees and incentives. It named the different membership levels and gave me the contact person's information. As I explore the website, I do not see any subscriptions to a newsletter. It a journal that comes our seasonally. It is online and it is called "The Canadian Children" contextualizes and maps pedagogical moments, practices, events, discourses, and conceptualizations of Canadian early childhood education. The articles examine arrangements, linkages, and assemblages can simultaneously create limitations and possibilities for children, educators, parents, researchers, policy makers, and curriculum developers.

Getting to Know Your International Contacts

I have contacted about four different contacts. My responses include redirection to the website or to another individual. The information I have gained has come from the websites and I have been referring to them regularly. I will continue to attempt contact and research the website, but as I have previously stated I feel these contacts do not feel a need reply to us. It is amazing how we are contacting different people, but we are getting the same results.

Sharing Web Resources

The organization that I am studying about is, the National Black Child Development Institute. It works to support and promote the development of evidence based programs designed specifically to engage, educate, and empower parents and communities of color. The program and the policy supports federal, state, and local efforts to provide an increasing number of low income children with access to quality early education and care; efforts to create strong and supported early childhood workforce and efforts to promote developmentally and culturally appropriate standards, curriculum, instruction and assessment that is aligned with the correct curriculum. The programs and activities include: TEACH, and many other programs around the country. The institute is committed to addressing multiple aspects of the child welfare system with a focus on family engagement. It is also important that you prioritize conversations about race, culture, class, and gender in the context of family engagement. It is critical for us to make important decisions about engaging with family and community members in ways that demonstrate a deeper and more complete understanding of the Early Childhood field.

Getting to know your International Contacts

I have made some contacts, but I was redirected to other people so I am still waiting on a reply. I researched the countries and their poverty issues and I found some interesting details. The poverty line in Australia is based on a factor that Australia is a developed nation. The notion of poverty is significantly different than the Third World Country. The families who has an income lower than other families in Australia are considered poor. Most of the students of Australia fall below the poverty line. The other groups of people who live under the poverty line of Australia are the aboriginals. The Smith Family Report of 2001 has given a statistics on Australia poverty line which is: 14.9% children of Australia are poor, total percentages of Australians who live in poverty are 13%. percentages of single parent families who live in poverty is 21.8%. In 2008-09, the UK had 13 1/2 million people living who were living below the low-income threshold. This is around a fifth (22%) of the population, the number of children living in low-income households was 3.9 million in 2008/2009. The government short term goal was that child poverty be reduced to the number of children in low-income households by a quarter.

My Organization....to RESEARCH......National Black Child Development Institute

The organization I chose is, National Black Child Development Institute. The website is www.nbcdi.org. It is one of the only national organization that is dedicated exclusively to the success and well-begin of Black Children, the National Black Child Development Institute and our network of Affiliates have been a powerful and effective voice on issues related to the education, care, and health of Black children and their families. NBCDI supports and works primarily with Black children birth through age 8 and their families through coalition building with community based organizations, foundations, and corporations, school systems, elected officials, government, child care, Head Start and many other public and private partnership. The organization has an upcoming conference coming up, it is called the "Bright Past, Better Future: Remember and Rise Up!" It is the 44th Annual Conference and it will be held October 11-14, 2014 in Detroit, MI. I am looking forward to finding out more about this organization, it seems to be interesting and different.

Professional Contacts: In Country and Outside the Country

This has been a busy week and a little frustrating on deciding which organizations I wanted to contact. I decided on Australia and the UK. I emailed both parties, and I am awaiting a reply. I am hoping to hear from them, because I am interested in how the Early Childhood Field is flowing in their countries. The website I decided to study and research over the next few weeks is the National Black Child Development Institute. I have skimmed the website and it appears to be an attractive website and it has a lot of vital information. I will be updating everyone on my finding.

My Supports----So blessed!

I am blessed to be surrounded by some great support including my family and close friends. As you know, I have three young boys and it can become quite overwhelming at times. It is good to have my family and their dad to help me out when I just need some “me time”. It takes strong support when you are juggling a job, working, and raising children. My support systems have helped me emotionally, financially, and physically. It is good to have shoulders to cry on or have someone to help you through a difficult financial low or do chores for you when you’re physically unable to. I am often told how blessed I am to have such a loving support team that consists of mostly family and a few close friends. My mom is my top supporter; she is there for me before I even know I need someone. I do not even want to imagine her not being there for me. I pray for strength that if I have to come to that point that God will get me through it. I can say to anyone if you have a good support system, you should be thankful because not everyone can be that blessed.