Global Children's Initiative

I have only been able to connect with one international resource, therefor I decided research deeper the Harvard University’s Global Children’s Initiative, established by the Center for the Developing Child at Harvard in 2006. The main belief of the program is that the vitality and sustainability of any society depends on the extent to which it expands opportunities early in life for all children to achieve their full potential and engage in responsible and productive citizenship. They see supporting healthy child development as the foundation of economic prosperity, strong communities, and a just society.  The main goal of the program is to get multiple sections regarding development involved in issues at a global level to better assess and assist in advancements in the field of childhood development and learning. They emphasis three main objectives that clearly their overall goal:

Ø Educating high level decision makers about the underlying science of learning, behavior, and health, beginning in the earliest years of life

Ø Supporting projects that create understanding of how healthy development happens, how it can be derailed, and how to get it back on track

Ø Building leadership capacity in child development research and policy to increase the number and influence of diverse voices and perspectives that are contributing to the growing global movement on behalf of young children.

A great program that was discussed regarding the Global Children’s Initiative is the Núcleo Ciência Pela Infância, its first major programmatic effort outside the United States. The program brought together 50 Brazilian politicians, policymakers, public managers and civil-society leaders together to examine how they can use knowledge about the science of child development to strengthen and advance policies and practices. 

The second program introduced on the website was Zambian Early Childhood Development Project. The main idea was to use an assessment tool that took into account existing child development measures and added in measures to take into the Zambian framework to evaluate children through all areas of development

I have learned in studying this website, that the same issues plague the world in regards to children.  This site strongly focuses on the idea that we all play an important role in advancements and improvements in the field of early childhood development. I completely realize and understand that as a world we are nowhere close to solving all concerns, but we are making great strides.

 

 

References:

Harvard University: Global Children’s Initiative Retrieved from: http://developingchild.harvard.edu/initiatives/global_initiative/