Trying To Find International Contacts

Making professional contacts outside the United States has proven quite difficult.  I am so disappointed by the lack of response.  I have started searching for early childhood websites and organizations online and have made an attempt to contact the Asia-Pacific Regional Network for Early Childhood at their home website www.arnec.net and have sent emails to their communications officer and general information email contact.  With any luck I will have made contact in the next few days.  I also found an article on issues and trends in early childhood around the world at http://www.worldforumfoundation.org/library/5017502.pdf.

The Childhood Poverty Research and Policy Centre website (http://www.childhoodpoverty.org/) or CHIP sheds light on what poverty looks like from the perspectives of different countries.  I took a closer look at India and the challenges it is facing with poverty.  Over a quarter of India’s one billion people live in varying degrees of poverty (CHIP, n.d.).  Poverty in India, like in many countries is associated with a lack of access to assets, skills, and low levels of health and education, which all limit people’s possibilities of benefiting from economic growth (CHIP, n.d.).  Though over the last five decades India has been able to reduce the percentage of people living in poverty by half this percentage continual fluctuates and absolute numbers of those suffering in poverty remains high (CHIP, n.d.).  India’s social services sector continues to face the major challenges of getting children of poor families into schools, keeping those children in school, and improving the quality of education those children receive while managing high rates of communicable disease, malnutrition, and the maternal and perinatal illness that are more prevalent in poor populations (CHIP, n.d.).  In addition to these challenges, gender, class, and caste continue to be major factors in children’s wellbeing and can especially limit girl’s life chances more so than boys (CHIP, n.d.).  Poorer rural populations depend highly on agriculture and livestock, which are vulnerable to drastic changes in rainfall, and drought being prevalent in 15 of the last 20 years in some higher populated regions of India (Rajasthan) has greatly shaped the economy (CHIP, n.d.).  Despite official statistics that support a decrease in poverty for Rajasthan access to healthcare and education are still a problem for underprivileged communities and gender bias continues to lessen girl’s chances of survival (CHIP, n.d.).  A majority of this research was reported in 2003, it would be interesting to see what policy changes and the implementation of rural government agencies regional control has changed in the last eight years for the children living in the poor rural regions of India.

What I found to be most interesting about poverty in India was that many of the photos pictured children at work whether doing chores to sustain the household or selling to the public to contribute to the household.  These images were strong for me…I grew up on a farm and I worked on it understanding the value of a hard days work, but it was more to spend the day with grandpa and I could have just followed him around rather than helping.  My work on the farm was not detrimental to my family’s livelihood, nor did it keep me from play or school.  The insight I gained from this research is that typically I think we see only what is in front of us…we live in our own little worlds not looking beyond our own problems and plights.  For poverty we can say we haven’t had much or everything that we’ve wanted, but we have all been faced with poverty of some sort whether our own or someone else’s (in commercials which upon seeing quickly change the channel or do not associate as a problem related to ourselves…how many of us have tried not to notice the homeless person asking for money or help?) yet I do not think many of us understand the full scope of the problem, even in our own country.  Understanding poverty and its affects on populations in other countries gives us an opportunity to evaluate possible and more successful solutions for the challenges of and surrounding the issue of poverty.  Every country has their own circumstances and challenges and none of them will be fixed overnight.  As an early childhood professional, being aware of the variations and circumstances of poverty for an individual child can help us better meet their needs and the needs of their family.

References

CHIP (n.d.). Country overviews. Childhood Poverty Research and Policy Centre. Retrieved July 14, 2012, from http://www.childhoodpoverty.org/index.php?action=countryo