ECDVU Sub-Saharan Africa: Mission Statement
To further develop African ECD leadership capacity as a key strategy in support of child, family and community well-being and broader social and economic development.
http://www.ecdvu.org/ssa/index.php
As nervous as I become over learning new technology (I still don't get the point or hang of Facebook), this site is a wondrous model of technology reaching where infrastructure does not. The ECD Virtual University, Sub-Saharan Africa model can unite the African nations in a collective effort to improve the lives of children on the continent, and provide collaborative information about child development to all other global locations. The link above brings the reader to a list of research reports that inform Early Childhood professionals of the state of early childhood, families, policies, issues, and trends affecting children in a given African region. Reading through the report submitted by Samuel Ngaruiya from Kenya, I was surprised-but-not-really to read that Kenya has experienced "a breakdown in social-cultural values, civil strife, conflict and war, rapid socio-economic and political change, and urbanisation as well as inadequate legislation and policy (that) have adversely affected children (Ngaruiya, 2002, pp16-17). Despite cultural differences, the current social issues that have a negative impact on early childhood seem to be the same worldwide.
Other topics that appear at this site are
• Identification of leadership skills needed to support parents in Tanzania
• Assessments of the impact of single-mother, low-income family structure on interaction between mother and child in Malawi
• The influence of different early childhood program models on school readiness on Kenya
I believe that it is noteworthy that a Canadian University sponsors the ECDVU-SSA. What does this say about the responsibilities and motives of educational institutions?
References
Ngaruiya, S., (2002). A Report on the status of Early Childhood Development in Kenya. Retrieved from http://www.ecdvu.org/ssa/index.php
2 comments:
Research project on children of the conflicts (war, etc) amazed me when I reviewed one of the websites for my blog. This is a topic that we do not touch very often, especially in United States. Perhaps, there are research projects on our soldiers and their children, but it is probably not the same as children who experience surviving the war zones.
It is so good to see international research projects aiming vary topics.
It seems like conflict and war, socio economic and political change are issues that continue to affect children. This is even worse in African nations. I hope that with continous research children will benefit in the long run. One of the topics: the influence of different early childhood programs model on school readiness in Kenya sound really interesting.
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