Establishing Professional Contacts and Expanding ResourcesThisThe

Part 1:
I was really interested in contacting other professionals or organizations in the early childhood field around the world.  I found the websites for Part 1 of the blog very helpful.  The first website that I looked for people to contact was on the NAEYC website.  I first wanted to contact people in Europe.  The first person that I contacted was a Secretary of the German National Committee for Early Childhood Education.  The second person that I contacted was from the same NAEYC website.  Juan Sanchez works for the World Association of Early Childhood Educators.  I searched for an organization on the UNICEF website and I chose to contact the UNICEF organization in Italy.  

I have not received any e-mails back from any of the organizations or professionals from these organizations of which I have contacted.  Therefore, I completed the alternative assignment for Part 1.  I listened to several of the podcasts from the website that is named World Forum Foundation Radio.  The first episode that I listened to was Deevia Bhana, she is a professor of a university in Natal South Africa.  Listening to this podcast, I learned a lot.  Her focus is on childhood sexuality.  She focuses on sexuality in children from ages 6 to 9.  There was a girl in school and she had HIV/AIDS, she was scared that other kids were going to make fun of her.  So Deevia Bhana was someone that kids could talk to if they were in these situations.  She is working on a book about childhood sexuality.   She wrote this book to inform children about sex and HIV/AIDS.  Bhana states: "Focusing on and listening to the voices of young children by understanding their fears and to work with them as gender and sexual beings."  These are important issues to talk about with children at this age group.  This is about the age that children are smart enough to understand what it means and how to eliminate the chances of this happening.

Another podcast that I listened too was from Maysoun Chehab.  In her organization, "we train early childhood caregivers on best practices."  In the organization Maysoun is involved in, they make the parents and the teachers aware of wars and other psychosocial events around them.  They train parents and teachers on the emotional effects on the impact of children, which she makes sure to state that it is important to impact the parents so they can help their child.   

Part 2: 
For this week's blog assignment, I chose to focus on was the Children's Defense Fund.  The reason that I chose this organization is because I was not familiar with this organization and was interested in learning what this organization was about.  I was originally going to focus on the Head Start program in the United States, but I have done previous research and know about this organization, so I chose to study an organization that I did not know about.  I also chose this organization because the e-newsletter was the most organized for me.  This organization has a newsletter every month that contains several mini newsletters within that one monthly newsletter.  In the monthly newsletters, they talk about beneficial people that have impacted this program and also fundraisers or organizations that help raise money for this organization.  Aside from the electronic newsletter, the section that I chose to focus on was "Our History".  Since I did not know anything about this organization, the first thing I wanted to do, was to learn about what this organization was about.  This Children's Defense Fund originated out of the Civil Rights Movement.  Mrs. Edelman was the first black woman to work to develop programs for low-income families.  In which she founded the Children's Defense Fund.  The Child's Defense Fund states: "we have become known for careful research on children’s survival, protection and development in all racial and income groups and for independent analyses of how federal and state policies affect children, their families and their communities. (Child 2012).  This organization is branching out not only to help the African American families that are low-income, but to every other family and culture that is considered low-income.  The main goal of this organization is to have the children and family be out of the low-income and poverty class by providing the help, child care and nutrition that the students need. 


References:
Children's Defense Fund(2012, ). Children's Defense Fund (CDF) : Health Care Coverage for All of America's Children, Ending Child Poverty, Child Advocacy Programs. About Us. Retrieved May 10, 2013, from http://www.childrensdefense.org/about-us/

(2011, ). World Forum Foundation. World Forum Radio | World Forum Foundation. Retrieved May 10, 2013, from http://worldforumfoundation.org/wf/wp/current-work/world-forum-radio/

National Association for the Education of Young Children | NAEYC. Global Alliance | National Association for the Education of Young Children | NAEYC. Retrieved May 10, 2013, from http://www.naeyc.org/resources/partnership/globalalliance

UNICEF - UNICEF Home. UNICEF - At a glance: Italy - Contact us. Retrieved May 10, 2013, from http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/italy_contact.html