International Organizations

 As I began researching online for International Organizations working to help with poverty, I was overwhelmed with the amount of help, supports, and websites that came up to help fight poverty in Canada. Living only about 25 minutes from the Canadian border, learning more about what they are doing to help end (or at least great reduce) Poverty in their country really interested me because I feel like in a lot of ways they do things a bit more efficiently than we do here, and wanted to see their efforts in action.

The first website that really drew my attention was:  https://www.canada.ca/en/employment-social-development/programs/poverty-reduction.html 

Canada created a "Poverty Reduction Strategy" back in 2018 (based on their extensive data collected in 2015)  in hopes to make positive changes to the people and families living in poverty. They set targets for the next 12 years (through 2030). There targets are:

Concrete poverty reduction targets (relative to 2015 levels):

• a 20% reduction in poverty by 2020
• a 50% reduction in poverty by 2030

Additionally, their strategy really focuses its efforts on 4 programs to provide investments to help support the social and economic well-being of their citizens struggling, the 4 programs are:

• Canada Child Benefit: a tax-free monthly payment that helps low- to middle-income families with the cost of raising children
• Canada Workers Benefit: a refundable tax credit that helps supplement the earnings of low-income workers
• Increase to the Guaranteed Income Supplement top-up benefit: it is helping to improve the financial security of close to 900,000 vulnerable seniors
• Canada’s first National Housing Strategy: a 10-year plan to give more Canadians a place to call home

They put together a pretty detailed and well thought out plan/strategy because they believe that "Every Canadian deserves a real and fair chance to succeed, no matter where they live or where they come from". What a great mission and focus, and I love that they were thoughtful in their planning to make this a long term strategy understanding that this change will take time, especially for it to be done right.

Below are some additional links that I found to be helpful and shared a bit more in depth the detail of their plan to make this happen. I was honestly quite blown away at their planning, focus, and attention to detail to make these efforts a positive change for so many in their country. 

https://www.oecd.org/els/family/child-well-being/Bussiere.pdf 

https://pm.gc.ca/en/news/news-releases/2020/03/05/more-1-million-canadians-lifted-out-poverty

https://www.homelesshub.ca/resource/opportunity-all-%E2%80%93-canada%E2%80%99s-first-poverty-reduction-strategy

Sharing Resources

The National Association for Educating Young Children (NAEYC) puts out many valuable and applicable resources for early childhood professionals relevant to the Early Childhood field (children ages birth to age 8). They publish books, blogs, offer professional development opportunities, as well as two different magazines for early childhood professionals (Young Children and Teaching Young Children). 

One of their publications that I find to be particularly helpful professionally as well as relevant to current issues and trends in the field is their "Young Children" magazine. In their Spring 2021 magazine, they had an article that I found to be pretty relevant to some current trends/issues I've been working through in my current programming. The article, "When in Doubt, Reach Out: Teaming Strategies for Inclusive Early Childhood Settings" (Spence et al., 2021) providing great resources about effective and developmentally appropriate ways to support and reach children in your program who are struggling in other areas. 

The article is very easy to read and understand and offers both baseline knowledge on the topic as well as more complex ideas and strategies to utilize as resources. The article highlights the following:

• It breaks down the role of each person on the IFSP team and what they do
• It breaks down what an Inclusive Program should look like 
• Elements of Effective Communication and Collaboration
• Appropriate and meaningful Communication tools to keep the team and parents all on the same page about their child 
• The importance of Gathering and Using Data
• Remembering to give ALL team members a voice 

This article provided me some great ideas and helpful strategies to use in my role as a supervisor within my program. In my current role, I oversee 4 sections of ECSE (early childhood special education) as well as tuition preschool and grant funded preschool. ECSE is definitely a new program for me and I don't have much of a prior knowledge base on how to support my special needs students as well as their teachers and support teams. I have spent the last year (since I started in this role) trying to learn all that I can  on topics and issues regarding anything Special Education related so that I can offer everyone involved the support and leadership they deserve. This article ties in very well with this focus and offered me additional learning, content, and ideas that will be useful in my leadership and programs!

Reference/Publication info:

Young Children Magazine. (2021). When in Doubt, Reach Out: Teaming Strategies for Inclusive Early Childhood Settings | NAEYC. National Association for the Educating of Young Children. https://www.naeyc.org/resources/pubs/yc/spring2021/teaming-strategies-early-childhood 

Expanding Horizons and Resources

 Prior to this weeks assignment, I honestly hadn't ever really thought about finding and/or listening to podcasts about early childhood development and education related topics. I am glad that I had the opportunity to put some time into this because, I found there are some really great podcasts out there, that i've been missing out on all this time. 

One that I really dug into and kept me interested was the "Not Just Cute" podcast, and honestly the only reason I started here, was because I thought the name was funny. But I found some pretty awesome, applicable, and through provoking information here, and will be following along beyond this weeks assignment. It's real, honest, and keeps me interested, but most importantly it keeps me learning on this topic and that's crucial for us as educators.

https://www.notjustcute.com/podcast

Over the years, I've heard of the website, "Save the Children" but have never really dove in to learn more about it and what they offer. After spending some time on their website, their mission is clear, they want to help every child and give them a good chance at a good life. They work hard to provide for those most in need to provide them basic rights and needs. This is such an important organization doing amazing work to better the lives of children everywhere. This is the type of organization that I want to help support. We need more people to spend more time, energy, and money on helping children. When I think about the situations that so many children are living in, it absolutely breaks my heart. I want to help them all, I want to save them all, and it's an overwhelming feeling. It's important that we support organizations like this one that have the resources, funding, and planning to help make an impact for so many children worldwide. 

https://www.savethechildren.org