National black child development institute

As I continue to explore this website, I find more and more information that could actually help my current employer to enroll more children. There is an initiative that this site as funded allowing either current teachers or those wishing to get involved in the program to get help financially in doing so. It is called T.E.A.C.H. Teacher education and compensation helps. This program has scholarships that could provide people with a chance to get a true education in early childhood. This would allow the system to have more qualified teachers and possibly start a phase where we are better prepared to teach our young children. I know that my current employer also has scholarships to offer to employees, but it just dawned on me that we could offer scholarships to parents who want to bring their children to our center but cannot afford it. This would make us a place that could promote education no matter the status of the family. It would allow every child to have an equal shot at an education and a high quality one at that.
    Entering the college zone is an initiative that allows parents of under-privileged middle school students to start preparing for college. This post made me stop and think that while this a great program and is much needed for those who may never have a chance to go to college, why not help everyone who wants to go to college? I heard on the news that in CO there was a law passed allowing illegal residence to go to a higher education institution for free. The reasoning behind this was to promote these people to become citizens and have a degree that would in turn promote our own economy. The theory is there but what about the rest of us who are legal residence and are struggling to go to school and further this country? it seems to me that the help for children who are underprivileged is needed but why not offer the help to everyone?
     There are 27 communities that are involved in the NBCDI, and their funding comes from many places. The government, donations, as well as private parties. To me this says that we want our children to succeed and in order for this to happen we need to support our early childhood education system. So many readings, journals, advertisements have shown that a child who starts their education in early childhood centers tend to do more in their lives and move on to become better things in life. If this were not true then why would companies like the Goddard schools be able to advertise and have so much promotion? For those 27 communities that are affiliated with this program, they are sending a message that we need our children to learn and the sooner they start the sooner they will be able to grasp what is important once they reach the age of public schools.

Poverty in Brazil

I have been in contact with two people from outside the U.S., One is from Haiti name Sandra and she is very informative and seems excited to talk with another person interested in the early childhood field. I also am speaking with Cintia from Brazil.
Sandra has offered me information about the hardships that the Haitian people face everyday. A lot of the information provided by her has been what we have already heard in the news. Her experience has been that most of the people she works with live in poverty as well as the people they serve. She said that there are not many programs in place that provide assistance to those in need. She said that compared to the pictures she has seen of the U.S. that her whole country is in poverty. I assured her that if all she has seen is prosperity and riches, that that is not all that America is. Our poverty is just as bad as others but being a nation that prides itself on being powerful those images are rarely seen to the outsiders. I asked her if there are any people in her country that are advocates for trying to get help for those who truly need it, she answered by simply saying no.

Cinita from Brazil is a sweet woman. She has actually called me and I have spoke with her. Her English is very good. She told me that in Brazil she has seen much poverty compared to America, (she has lived in America for a brief stint). She said that her early childhood centers do not have the abilities to provide all the things that we have in America. Cintia said that in the center she works in that there are many people of different origins, some wealthy, some poor, and some homeless. She also said that the programs that are in place in Brazil are from the government and are only available to a small few. The government does not provide like the American government. She said that she noticed while in the U.S. that what we consider to be poverty is life in Brazil. They do not consider living with multiple families under one roof, poverty,  they will share everything they can in her country. She loves the sense of community that she sees in her country.

All in all I can see that even though we have poverty in the U.S. that we do not understand the half of what real poverty is. We see that people who have a two bedroom apartment and three families living there are poor, but what we don't realized is that this maybe the way they live where they are from. The American dream, as everyone calls it, is just that, the American dream. As Americans we do not have the sense of community and the comrodery that other countries do. We are all about each man for himself. It's about who can out-do who. This to me makes me sad and shows me that we are truly a spoiled nation and selfish as well.

National Black Child Development Institute

National Black Child Development Institute
http://nbcdi.org/blog/category/early-childhood-education/

I have signed up for the news letter from this site, but have not yet receieved anything! I did however go through the website to look at some of the newly added content and found a side note that caught my attention.  One thing that caught my eye was on their page they have an update of "this week in black history", I am a natural history buff and loved that. Interesting facts they post. Another thing that caught my eye was their Parent Empowerment Project. This project reminded me of the Pastoral project in Paraguay. This first line of the desciption was, "PEP is a program that seeks to educate, motivate and inspire parents to excellence as their Child’s first teacher The National Black Child Development Institute (NBCDI) introduces an exciting curriculum for parent education." This is exactly what the Pastoral project was describing that they were trying to accomplish within their communitites. This project sounds wonderful, as there are so many children out there that need a parent. The fact that this site is trying to reach out to the parents to relay that they are their child's first teacher I see as amazing work.
I am eager to get my first newsletter and will keep all up to date on their progress.

Contact outside the United States

When I learned that we were to have contact with an early childhood educator outside the united states, I was really excited. I love learning about other cultures and how their children are taught differently than ours. I immediately contacted three educators outside the U.S. I contacted Germany, El Salvador, and Ghana. I was sad to learn that the Ghana email address was no longer working. I will continue to try to receive a response from other countries though.
The website that I decided to dive into was the National Black Child Development Institute. I thought that by learning how the minorities in our own country view early childhood education it may be easier to understand some of the ideas that I discuss with my future "pen pal" from outside the U.S. This group has been around for 40 years and has worked to improve the status of child welfare services. I found this to be fascinating. I liked this website because I currently work for a company that has three centers. One of which is for lower income families and I have seen the terrible things and emotional states of the children on the lower side of the economic realm, most of whom are of the black community. I do not care what color or race a child or person for that matter, is everyone deserves a fair shot at making something of themselves. I believe that children who are offered a chance to learn early in life that they will be better prepared to survive in the "real world" when it comes around to them.