Sharing Blog Resources

     The link that I have decided to explore this week is the International Child Resource Institute (ICRI).   This institute focuses on early childhood care and education, children’s rights, empowerment of women and girls, maternal child health and grass root community development. They were founded in 1981 and have developed or operated over 300 programs in over 50 countries.   A really interesting thing I found out about the site is that they don’t  look at the need of country and decide they will go in and help, but they have made it their mission that they must be invited by the country to help. 

     Many countries have invited ICRI in to assist them.  On the Blog site of ICRI it mentions a story of being invited into a place in the Andes called Lucha de las Pobres (“Struggle of the Poor) where this group of people have taken over land that is owned by the government.  The article says that this group of people moved to this area to escape some of the poverty that was in the country.  One of the ways that they have been able to protect themselves from the government taking the land back is by planting dynamite in the cars or throwing it at any intruder, so far this has worked. 

     ICRI had the opportunity visit this country and bragged on a family child care there.  One lady cares for 12 children and had a 12 year old assistant.  The children were happily playing with old pots and pans and bits of wood.  There was also a little girl mentioned in the article that could not walk, the provider picked up the little girl and said that this little girl deserves the same opportunities as the other children in her care.  A question was asked to the provider, (how do you plan for the children?).  The provider showed a box with very old folders where she took notes of where the children were when they first came to her center and how they were progressing and how she had made plans to assist them in developing.  The ICRI representative was convinced that this was the best family child care that he had visited.

     Though this village had broken away from another village, it has in its own way found a way to make quality early learning experiences available, accessible and affordable for some of the children in their village.  There was no funding from the government, no educational support districts or policies set in place, just a provider that wanted to give all children the best learning experience possible, that’s a new insight for sure.  What an amazing story of building your own equity.

Revisiting previous blogs

      Center on the Developing Child Harvard University on which my past blogs focused on their international studies of children, also has a commitment to eliminating and reducing developmental barriers.  Harvard University may realize that these barriers are the affects of inequities that so many families are facing, and therefore has partnered with organization such as National Conferences of State Legislators. However I did not see any initiatives that directly referenced inequities such as availability, affordability and accessibility directly.  

 http://developingchild.harvard.edu/initiatives/early_childhood_innovation_partnership/    

      International Child Resource Institute
http://www.icrichild.org/