Getting to Know Your International Contacts -Part 3

For this week’s assignment I selected to review the UNESCO’s website on early childhood. UNESCO has provided a wide variety of information on early childhood. UNESCO advocates on Early Childhood Care and Education by focusing on health, nutrition, security and learning. My professional initial goals from the course “Early Childhood Foundations” was (1) to advocate on behalf of early childhood education; (2) to make positive impact on the lives of practitioners and caregivers and; (3) to help form support groups for parents and guardians. At the end of the course my redefined goals were (1) To advocate for funding to support medicals and nutritious meals for early childhood children within early childhood institutions;(2) To support groups within the early childhood institutions such as the Parent Teacher’s Association by providing with information on health care and developmental stages of children and (3) To create and information booth at a designated area or through the use of the internet to collect information on early childhood. The information on early childhood from UNESCO ECCE is overwhelming, so much to learn, so much to digest and so much to execute or to put into action. UNESCO ECCE discusses topics such as access and equity and quality. As you know quality, access and equity are all early childhood issues that affect us internationally and UNESCO ECCE discusses the initiative they have taken to promote deal with all these issues in early childhood education internationally. ECCE examines factors such as pedagogy materials, personnel training, service setting, parental education and involvement. I believe these factors relate to all of my three goals. One insight I have surely garnered from reading this web site is the sharing of information on quality early childhood education. My goals 2 and 3 relates to information sharing. For the past three and half years I have realize enough is not being done on the local level in my country to promote information about early childhood. I believe UNESCO ECCE has vital information that various stakeholders could use to invest more in early childhood and contribute to policies that will eventually lead to long term positive benefits for early childhood education. I might not have a lot of resources but I can start in my small circle by promoting my goals; making my voice be heard in church groups, PTA's, council meetings etc. about the importance of our children gaining access to quality early childhood education and that early childhood gets the attention it deserves.

Reference

http://www.unesco.org/new/en/education/themes/strengthening-education-systems/early-childhood/quality/