UNICEF- New Zealand

We all know that poverty is rampant in underdeveloped countries. So, I wanted to find out about children in poverty in an industrialized country. As a trend in my blog posts I have chosen to focus on early education in New Zealand. So, I decided to research what UNICEF had to report about child poverty in this industrialized country. I found a few insights to share with you here about child poverty in New Zealand.

•  According to the UNICEF New Zealand website 1 in 4 children are living in poverty in New Zealand. This was an alarming statistic to me. For some reason I felt the percentage would be much lower. This also caused me to question how many children in other industrialized countries live in poverty. According to the Children's Defense Fund nearly 20% of children in the US are living in poverty- that's 1 in 5 children. A report from Global News reports the same statistic of children living in poverty in Canada. So, the number of New Zealand's children living in poverty is not far off from these other statistics.

• The cost of remediating poverty might be less than the cost of leaving children in poverty on society overall. When children live in poverty they are more likely to drop out of school and to engage in criminal acts later in life. In New Zealand, the cost to the justice system due to this is approximately $2 billion per year.

• The largest impact on child poverty occurs when policy and budget changes occur within the government. Policy changes that affect family income and housing are among the most influential on child poverty along with those that address education and health. " (UNICEF, n.d.). So, advocacy efforts are key to the changes that we want to see in child poverty levels in all countries. 

One of the best ways to get involved is by donating to UNICEF: New Zealand here.

References

Children's Defense Fund. (2016, Sept. 13). Children’s Defense Fund Child Poverty in America 2015: National Analysis. Retrieved from http://www.childrensdefense.org/library/data/child-poverty-in-america-2015.pdf

Global News. (2015, Nov. 24). Nearly 1 in 5 Canadian children living in poverty: report. Retrieved from http://globalnews.ca/news/2360311/nearly-1-in-5-canadian-children-living-in-poverty-report/

UNICEF: New Zealand. (n.d.). Child poverty in New Zealand. Retrieved https://www.unicef.org.nz/learn/our-work-in-new-zealand/Child-Poverty-in-New-Zealand

Sharing Web Resources

      The organization I am investigating this semester is  the National Association of Early Childhood Teacher Educators (NAECTE) and can be located at this address http://naecte.org/. This organization focuses on  teacher education and providing a variety of opportunities for continuing education. The two largest focuses seem to be their Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education and their annual conferences- which actually occur twice a year in conjunction with the NAEYC Annual Conference and the NAEYC Annual Professional Development Institute.

      NAECTE publishes an E-Letter 3 times per year (Spring, Fall, and Winter) and the focus is usually something to do with one of their conferences. There is also a contribution from the current President of NAECTE in each issue. In the most recent issue President Kelly Baker discussed her collaboration with representative from NAEYC and the work they plan to engage in together in the upcoming year.

      The Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education is where I located some information that is connected to this week's topic of diversity and changing demographics. Due to this being a publication about teacher education, not about educating young children, please be prepared for a shift of perspective. When we think about diversity and demographic changes we often think of race or ethnicity but cultural changes encompass a wide range of changing realities in our society. One of these is addressed in the article Community-based collaboration for early childhood teacher education: Partner experiences and perspectives as co–teacher educators. When we shift our perspective to include the need for a different approach to teacher education that reflects a parallel practice to how we educate young children (hands-on, community based, culturally responsive, child-directed) we can see the value of a change in the way that higher education institutions address how teacher education is implemented.

Here is a figure from the article which highlights the principals of the field-based (ie. hands-on) teacher education model:

Here are some of the aspects of teacher education and how the traditional university-based model compares to the Teaching, Learning, and Leading with Schools and Communities (TLLSC) model:

(I know this is a little difficult to see on the blog but you can read it more easily if you click the link above for the full article)

      With the shift in demographics in classrooms, teachers should be educated with communities and partnerships in mind.

      We, as Walden students, have access to the Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education through the Walden Library. I highly recommend checking out the vast array of articles that are available in the journal.

Getting Ready—Expanding Horizons and Expanding Resources

Part 1:

The World Forum site and radio/podcast station were not available at this time. Therefore, I will be completing the alternative assignment for Part 1. At first I thought I would just pick one of the 2 sites at random. However, I realized I wanted to know more about the organizations before I chose which one to learn more about over the next 8 weeks. So, I went to the Charity Navigator website.  On this site you can discover many things about non-profit organizations.

After conducting some research I decided to focus on the Global Fund for Children. There were a few factors that helped me to decide. One of the most important factors was that I found that the Global Fund for Children only makes an annual revenue of $6,222,710 compared to the $641,045,550 (more than 10 times higher) revenue of Save the Children. It got me thinking that any additional exposure that can be granted to The Global Fund could help them to do that much more good work.

This mission statement, retrieved from Charity Navigator, speaks to how the organization focuses on not only direct service to children, but contributions to social change in different ways.

Part 2:

For this section I chose to investigate the National Association of Early Childhood Teacher Educators (NAECTE) website and newsletters. Unfortunately I cannot seem to figure out how to actually subscribe to the newsletter. Since it is a quarterly publication I will be able to at least go back and read several previous issues.

I actually attempted to choose a few other options from the resource list first but they all seemed to have broken links. In the end I am glad that I chose NAECTE since my work now and in the future will be focused on educating teachers. I do not know a lot about the organization yet but I definitely look forward to learning more about this organization that focuses on teaching teachers!