Establishing Professional Contacts and Expanding Resources

After reading through the instruction for this week blog assignment, I decided to go for option A because I felt communicating with a professional from another country would helped me have varied perspective to issues and trends in the early childhood field. I decided to choose Egypt and Australia as my countries of interest, although I sent to other countries in order to be on a safe side. I chose Egypt because of the recent revolution and I wanted to know what are the issues were been addressed currently in regards to children and their families. Egypt UNICEF strike my interest because UNICEF as an organization is worldwide and have been known to address several issues to support child development, Australia on the other hand is a country I always wish to settle down and raise my family, it is a beautiful country filled with beautiful natural endowment .I was then curious to know about issues that affects children there and how organizations tend to address this challenges.

I wrote to some organizations but I have only received a response from UNICEF Egypt stating that my request would be forwarded to the appropriate quarters; meanwhile I could go through their website for more information about them and what they do. This is a copy of the letter in English and Arabic, I am still waiting for a response.

THE LETTER

Thank you for your interest in UNICEF, your email will be forwarded to the concerned staff.

For information about UNICEF programmes in Egypt, please visit our UNICEF Egypt Country Office website on: http://www.unicef.org/egypt.

 You can also learn more about UNICEF global actions on: http://www.unicef.org


نشكر لكم اهتمامكم باليونيسف ، سيتم تحويل بريدكم الإلكترونى الى المسئول المختص

www.unicef.org/egypt لمزيد من المعلومات عن برامج اليونيسف فى مصر يمكنكم زيارة موقع يونيسف مصر

http://www.unicef.org للمزيد من المعلومات عن انشطة اليونيسف على مستوى العالم برجاء زيارة موقعنا

I went through their website and  read about services they render such as Child survival and development, Basic education and gender equality, Children and HIV /AIDS, Child protection, Policy advocacy and partnership. I also read through their press release on how they have supported displaced families of Libya and Syrian crisis along the Egypt's borderline. UNICEF helped through deployment of staff and humanitarian relief supplies in Egypt to provide support, especially in the areas of child protection, water and sanitation, health and nutrition. I also read that Etisalat Egypt; a communication organization and UNICEF signed an agreement to provide safe water connection to 1000 households in Qena Governorate

As for the organization I choose to explore in order to get to know specific ways in which the organization supports the Early childhood community and the resources it offers,I chose Early Childhood Australia.i subscribed to their newsletter for regular update and also decided to follow them on face book page,in order to be able to read comments and opinions on issues posted for discussion.

Early childhood Australia’s mission is to advocate in ensuring quality, social justice and equity in all issues relating to the education and care of children from birth to eight years. Their advocacy is achieved through conferences, seminars, research work and publications. I intend to read more about their role in supporting children and their development, this would give me the opportunity to understand how they address these issues and the knowledge gained can probably be applied elsewhere in the world