Week 2: Sharing Resources

The international organization’s website that I chose to follow was for the International Child Resource Institute, http://www.icrichild.org. I chose this website because, as an advocate, I believe that one’s resources is the meat of their efforts. This is especially evident when it comes to the Early Childhood Education field. ICRI’s focus is to provide information on research regarding children’s issues including education, childcare, and women’s & gender equality and empowerment, and the need for continual development and grassroots work for communities all over the world. At the core of this organization’s efforts, is the hope that the world will be a better place for future generations, and that we as professionals can provide them with the tools it will take to make this true for their children to come.  

While ICRI does not have a newsletter per se, they maintain a very engaging blog, which I have continued to follow since beginning this class. Each month ICRI posts their accomplishments, goals, and new information as it relates to the agency’s mission and vision concerning children around the globe. While the September issue has not been published yet, Augusts’ blog postings described a major accomplishment of ICRI, that I had learned about in my previous Walden ECE classes. The blog shares the accomplishments of one of the programs they help to sponsor called El Nuevo Mundo, a community program in Mexico which works to educate parents about childhood development, importance of education for children, as well as how to become empowered and act for their children’s rights. El Nuevo Mundo celebrated the children’s 2011 graduation in August by having a ceremony, which celebrates the children’s culture, educational achievements, as well as congratulates their parents for their perseverance over obstacles such as their own lack of education, poverty, etc.

In another August blog post on the ICRI site, concerns the on-going struggle the agency participates in with their projects in Nepal including children’s rights, education, and health in the nation. This blog post concerns the barriers Nepal’s children and families face in their educational system, specifically regarding children with disabilities, whom are also most often the most disadvantaged. The blog post is entitled “Separate and Unequal in Nepal.” It describes a wheel-chair bound, school-aged child whom is eager to attend school, but faced many daily obstacles. The child struggles daily in his determination such as having to physically crawl up the school’s front steps because there is no ramp, being unable to use the bathroom during school hours because he requires assistance which teachers and peers decline to provide, and isolation from those peers because he is different.

The ICRI blog posting regarding Nepal’s educational system and how children with disabilities are often set up for failure, really sheds light on how all around the world, young people are in dire need of advocacy. The post further describes how parents of disadvantaged children are stuck between a rock and a hard place usually because of policy-makers’ lack of understanding about how their world works…or doesn’t work for that matter.