Sharing Web Resources

On November 14, 2012 Child Care Aware® announced that they have joined forces with Parents magazine to focus on the national child care crisis.  They stated that parents are having difficulties finding affordable, quality care together are asking readers to write to member of
Congress to support protections for children attending child care.

I think that Child Care Aware® is looking for partnerships that support their mission, but are not the typical advocacy partnership.  The safeguards they are seeking would increase requirements for most all states basic licensing requirements and these safeguards can be costly.  I personally agree with the safeguards that they are seeking, but in our state we just did public hearings on our revised licensing requirements and some of the items such as increasing initial training to 40 hours would not pass in our state the way the system is currently set up where states set their standards.  So some of the items that they are pushing for in their package to Congress could become controversial to the child care industry as a whole.

This information is very political and coupled with the information we have read about making the investment in early childhood it is critical that we provide high quality care.  The safeguards that they are seeking will increase the health and safety for young children thus increasing the quality of care.  I think that going to parents is the key to getting the word out and engaging them in a magazine that they regularly read is genius because they already have a trust in the brand.

Reading the public policy blog Child Care Aware® has opened my eyes to begin thinking about early childhood through the lens of the parent.  While I have always known that parents are key partners in working in this field Child Care Aware® does a very good job at keeping that parent focus and writing for the parent viewpoint versus the early childhood professional viewpoint.  I feel that I have read information that I already knew, but seeing it through a different lens strengthens the information.  Reading about Child Care Development Block Grant (CCDBG) through the lens of the parent is very different from the lens that I typically use so I think it is making me a better early childhood public policy fanatic!

Getting to Know Internation Contacts

My international contact is Patrick Makokoro from Zimbabwe.  Patrick is the Director at Nhaka Foundation, a non profit that is implementing a program that is increasing access to early education especially for orphans and vulnerable children. Early Childhood Development centers serve as an
entry point to the community for OVC and HIV/AIDS initiatives. The focus population consists of families containing orphans and vulnerable children in economically deprived rural areas with a high prevalence of HIV/AIDS.

The following questions were this weeks exchange of information between Patrick and I:

How are you involved in early childhood work in your country?

I am the founder and promoter of the Zimbabwe Network of Early Childhood Actors. Through this platform we are bringing together all the organizations especially the grassroots organizations working in ECD to make sure that their voices are projected and that there is access to resources both at a
Network and organizational level. In fact, I am just now coming from the successful hosting of our inaugural national conference! This has come as a culmination of my role as a Global Leader and also my work in ECD in Zimbabwe for the past 5 years.

What impact does your work have on the early childhood community where you live?

The impact is huge. I actually live in the peri urban areas where the prevalence rate of HIV/AIDS is very high and therefore families rarely make conscious choices of ensuring that orphans are sent to preschool. As a person who promotes access to early learning for children the community's
perception and awareness on the importance of ECD has been increased. More children are now accessing quality learning preschools and this has been a huge impact felt in the whole community.

What is your greatest challenge in your early childhood work?

The greatest challenge we have has been the resources. There is such a lot of work that needs to be done in the communities in order to increase access to early childhood programs. The preschool buildings are old and worn down and as such require renovation, there are no play materials, the teachers need to be retrained in order to increase quality education amongst the many
challenges. These require either financial or material resources and my job has been made even tougher by the global financial crisis. Some of the other down level challenges we have been handling through appreciative inquiry and other strength based approaches to community development.

This week with the study of poverty and my personal quest to learn about the local poverty in my community and beginning my exchanges with Patrick has caused me to really reflect on poverty and its over all impact on the lives of children and families.  This has been a very inspiring and soul searching week for me personally.

Sharing Web Resources

The Organization I chose to learn more about is Child Care Aware® of America.  The focus of this organization is be our nations leading voice for child care.  They work with local and state Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies to ensure that families have access to quality and affordable child care.  They also are leaders in developing and advocating for child care policies.  The website is as follows:  http://www.naccrra.org/

In the public policy section of thier website they provide information for advocates on the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) as well as develop a policy agenda.  They have an action center and your can sign up for their weekly newsletter titled, "Capitol Connection:  Weekly Update!".  They also provide training for child advocates and host a national policy conference each year in the spring.

In this weeks Capitol Connection they provided resouces for parents and professional regarding recovery and relief from Hurricane Sandy.  The provided information on Voting for Children and Families and how to locate your polling place.  They were also utilizing social media by providing updates for both Twitter and Facebook that stated "I Voted for Children and Families".  Additionally, they provided information about Race to the Top District Application deadline extensions.  Each week they host a lunch & learn webinar to provide training for early childhood advocates.  This weeks lunch & learn was titled, "The New Face of Hill".  This webinar is on Thursday and I am planning on attending.  I will keep you posted!

Establishing Professional Contacts and Expanding Resources

In my quest to expand my circle of early childhood professional contact to include international professionals I have emailed three organizations to make contact, but at this time have not heard back from them.  Additionally, I also emailed Roger Neugebauer with Child Care Exchange.  Roger and his wife Bonnie coordinate the World Forum so I asked him to assist me in making some international connections.  Roger has already emailed me back and copied on an email to some of his contacts.  I am hopeful that I will successfully will create my international connection.

The website I chose to explore is Child Care Aware of America formerly National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies.  I chose them because they provide a great voice to the early childhood community.  Additionally, they have recently gone through a re-branding process and they have updated and changed much of their information so I wanted to explore this website.  They completely re-designed their website and it full of resources and divided into three different categories early care providers, parents, and advocates.

I look forward to learning from my new international early childhood colleagues as well as learning from my classmates new connections as well.