Getting to Know Your International Contacts--Part 2

Harvard University’s Global Children’s Initiative

            Global Children’s Initiative seeks to advance the Center’s mission by implementing compelling research, public engagement and leadership development agenda in child health development that is grounded in science and engages researchers, public leaders, practitioners, and students from a wide range of institutions around the world.

Three strategic objectives:

To reframe public discourse about the early childhood period by educating high-level decision-makers about the common underlying science of learning, behavior, and health;

To support innovative, multidisciplinary research and demonstration projects in selected countries or regions to expand global understanding of how healthy development happens, how it can be derailed, and how to get it back on track;

To build leadership capacity in child development research and policy among individuals and institutions in low –and middle-income countries in order to increase the number and influence of diverse perspectives that is contributing to the global movement on behalf of young children.

New insights from articles read on the website include:

Applying the Science of Early Education in Brazil

~The aim is to use the science of child health and development to guide stronger policies and larger investments to benefit children and their families in Brazil.

Zambian Early Childhood Development Project

~Effort launched in 2009 to measure the effects of an ongoing anti-malarial initiative on children’s development in Zambia.

Studying the Effects of Global Adversity, Two Generations at a Time

~Theresa Betancourt, Center-affiliated faculty member, conducted the study of combining short- term survival efforts with attention to children’s developmental needs.  Betancourt stated, “Just keeping children alive isn’t sufficient, given the leveragable opportunities that exist to invest in their social capital and to maximize that next generation of young people.

 

Podcast

I chose to listen to the podcast of Meridas Eka Yora.  Mr. Yora built 3 boarding schools for orphans of the 2009 tsunami in Aceh, Indonesia.  He uses a holistic approach when caring for the children. Months after the tsunami, the children still experienced trauma.  Some children still could not accept the deaths of their families.  The teachers must be the father and mother for the children before becoming their teachers.  Older siblings are allowed to act like siblings.  This gives a family feeling for the children.  He and his wife took orphans in to live with them.  He has dedicated his life to the care of children.

 

References

Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University.  (2010). Global children’s initiative.  Retrieved from http://www.developingchild.harvard.edu/index.php/activities/global_initiative

 

World Forum Foundation Radio.  Retrieved from http://www.worldforumfoundation.org/wf/radio.php