International Contacts

                In the weeks since beginning this course I have worked diligently to contact another early childhood professional within a different country.  I have probably emailed 12 people and have not gotten a response from anyone.  Due to this fact, I had to choose the alternative route for this assignment.  I am not giving up however and I will continue to email people until maybe I get a response. 

                The person I chose in the podcasts that were available on the World Forum Radio website was Delfena Mitchell.  She is the director of children’s home in the country of Belize.  The name of the home is the Liberty Children’s Home and it is a program that generally takes children from the ages of birth to 5 years.  The children that come to this home have been abandoned, orphaned, or have suffered some type of abuse.  The children may also have special needs or disabilities.  I have emailed this home but have not received a response as of yet.

                In her podcast Delfena speaks about the number one issue in Belize being that of child abuse and neglect.  Her children’s home takes these children in and provides them with time to heal from the circumstances that they have had to suffer.  She speaks of a little boy who came to the home and hadn’t spoken for a year.  After working with her and the others at Liberty Children’s Home within a few weeks he was talking and telling them his story.  He would share how he was beaten by his grandmother and how if he wanted to eat, he would have to hide under his bed so that he did not get his food taken by a sibling or an adult who was living there. 

                In researching poverty in Belize I discovered that 50% of the children living here live below the poverty line and are involved in a never ending cycle of poverty.  Some of the issues that contribute to their poverty are the increased risk of HIV/Aids (which leaves many children orphaned or abandoned), natural disasters (such as hurricanes and floods) which diminish access to clean water and sanitary conditions, and access to early childhood education.  Although the government in Belize is attempting to rectify their situation, most families still find it challenging to access the services they need to keep them out of poverty and safe from life-threatening ordeals. 

                The country that I chose to read about from the Childhood Poverty Research and Policy Centre was India.  Three insights that I gained about the poverty in India are that it is very high, that children are greatly affected, and that programs being run are not adequately addressing the poverty situation.  In India 260.2 million of their 1.03 billion people are living in poverty (CHIP, 2012).  Although since the 1990s India has reduced some of its poverty levels, it is still very high.   Children are affected the most by this poverty.  Almost ½ of the children living here under the age of 5 are considered malnourished and 34% of newborns are underweight (CHIP, 2012).  There is a great deal of issues that contributes to this poverty.  One is that there is a lack of access to health and education services.  India accounts for 20% of the worlds out-of- school population (CHIP, 2012).  This is due to the fact that many of the children work and a large number of these children are under the age of 16.  10-15% of households in India have working children who make up between 18-45% of the household income. 

Another issue is that in India families become involved in poverty cycles because of indebtedness.  The money that they have to pay for cultural events (marriages, death feasts) leads to a lack of funds for the households to survive on.   In India the central government is responsible for providing programs that help to reduce poverty.  Some of the programs that they provide are rural employment, self-employment, and food subsidy programs such as the Public Distribution System.  These programs are targeted towards poor families but even with these programs India is still being challenged to break the poverty cycles that exist within it. 

                One of the main insights that I learned from my studies this week is that childhood poverty is a cycle.  When a child grows up within poverty and is never given access to skills or assets to remedy the poverty, then the child will grow to be an adult living in poverty and will pass this on to future generations.  There are many countries (including our own) where this occurs and although there are many programs that strive to help with poverty, an adequate job is not being done in most places.

                Further in my research and when I began thinking about India and Belize’s problems, I found that one of the major issues is that of education (or lack thereof).  Many of these countries do not have access to quality early childhood education programs.  Education plays a vital role in economic stability.  These children are not given the chance to learn the things that they need to learn to further their education and foster growth within the economy.  Lack of education limits the possibilities that they have to find adequately paying jobs and without these they cannot afford other life sustaining items such as food and healthcare.  This is where the vicious cycle begins and the reason that it continues. 

                Healthcare is another big issue in relation to poverty.  In these countries or within cycles of poverty illness can take a toll on a family.  When families cannot afford appropriate healthcare, often times the working member of the family may die which leads to greater amounts of poverty and orphaned or abandoned children.  For this reason there is a great need for food security and healthcare accessibility for these people.  Healthcare not only needs to be accessible, but it also needs to be affordable or in many cases free for people who are stuck in these never-ending cycles of poverty.  I also learned that when a child is living in such poverty that affects how they are nourished, this can affect cognitive development.  If a mother is unable to provide the appropriate nutrients for an unborn child or a newborn child, this can cause critical issues in development that cannot be reversed.  There is a call for higher levels of care in dealing with this critical issue.  The question is how can our generation answer that call?  I’m hoping that with further research I can find a way to become more involved, how about you!

Resources:

Childhood Poverty Research and Policy Centre. (2012). Country overviews-india. Retrieved from http://www.childhoodpoverty.org/index.php?action=countryo

Unicef. (2009). The children in belize. Retrieved from http://www.unicef.org/belize/20582.htm

World Forum Radio. (2012). Episode 3: Delfena mitchell. Retrieved from http://worldforumfoundation.org/wf/wp/current-work/world-forum-radio/