Week 3: Issues and Trends: Poverty

This week we are addressing issues on poverty and how it affects children and the early childhood field and roles of various professionals and organization in addressing it. My effort to exchange contacts with a professional in the field was not fruitful, so decided to adopt alternative B, I read and listened to the podcast from world forum foundations. World forum foundation brings the international community together to exchange ideas on the early childhood education. I was particular more focused on the professionals that addressed issues of poverty and its related attributes. I read more information from their website on what they do to address poverty in the early years also and I explored the Childhood Poverty Research and Policy centre (CHIP)

Fajar Hidayah  Foundation  

http://www.fajarhidayah.com/en/photogallery/others/Fajar_Hidayah_brief_history.pdf

Meridas Eka Yora is the founder and director of the institution Fajar Hiayah for Islamic Education and Director of the Yayasan Fajar Hidayah Foundation. Meridas developed three boarding schools for children orphaned as a result of that devastation in Aceh which was a result of the earthquake and tsunami in which more 225,000were killed and 500,000 were left homeless. He created a family kind of environment for the children alongside their learning, teachers were trained to be father and mother to these kids while teaching them, psychologist were initially employed, to help children traumatized by tsunami and war, but they later realized the children needs more of a feeling of home, so the children were made to relate,like  brother and sisters, helping one another ,like if they were in their home.

Corporate Social Responsibility

Fajar Hidayah’s corporate social responsibility is reflected in its socio financial policy manifested

as follows:

1. Free education for the children of Fajar Hidayah’s teachers and employee.

2. Free morning snacks and lunch for Fajar Hidayah’s teachers and employees as well as their children who study in Fajar Hidayah.

3. Free extended education for poor families with children age 4 to 15, in the surrounding neighborhood of every Fajar Hidayah School.

4. Scholarship for orphans from other schools.

5. Scholarship for higher education.

6. Free life skill training for orphans or poor families

7. Free family and Shari’a counseling.

Liberty Foundation

www.libertyfoundation.org.uk

It provides care and education for abused and abandoned children in Belize, Central America, Although Belize has the second highest per capita income in Central America, the average income figure masks a huge income disparity between rich and poor. The 2010 Poverty Assessment shows that more than 4 out of 10 people live in poverty. “Drugs, violence, prostitution and teen pregnancy are an all-too-common reality for Belizean children, who have few positive alternatives.”
(UNICEF)

Delfena Mitchell is Director of the Liberty Children’s Home, on the outskirts of Belize City. This program opened in the summer of 2005 and is licensed to house up to 40 children, predominantly between births to 5 years of age. However, older children who have younger siblings in care are and will always be accommodated.  it  aimed to give children much more than just shelter and food, by providing an environment where children are respected, nurtured and treated as individuals. The foundation helps abused and abandoned children regain their self-esteem, to develop trust in adults and to form healthy relationships. Liberty works closely with the Belize Human Services Department and strives to ensure successful placements with foster or adoptive families, if not reunification with a family member. It provides education for up to forty pre-school children in the local community of Ladyville, including those with special needs. (liberty foundation,2012)

                     

                             CHIP - http://www.childhoodpoverty.org/index.php?action=rationale

Poverty denies opportunities to people of all ages. Lost opportunities in childhood cannot always be regained later - childhood is a one-off window of opportunity and development. Poverty experienced by children, even over short periods, can affect the rest of their lives. Malnutrition in early childhood, for example, can lead to life-long learning difficulties and poor health.
Today's poor children are all too often tomorrow's poor parents. Poverty can be passed on from generation to generation affecting the long-term health, wellbeing and productivity of families and of society as a whole. Tackling childhood poverty is therefore critical for eradicating poverty and injustice world-wide.
The Childhood Poverty Research and Policy Centre is a collaborative research and policy programme which involves Save the Children, the Chronic Poverty Research Centre (CPRC) and partners in China, India, Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia. Running from 2001 to 2005, it aims to contribute to global poverty reduction efforts by:
• Deepening understanding of the main causes of childhood poverty and poverty cycles, and increasing knowledge of effective strategies to tackle them in different contexts
• Examining economic and social factors at different levels - international, national and local - which contribute to poverty in childhood
 Informing effective policy to end childhood poverty, communicating research findings to policy makers, practitioners and advocates
• Raising the profile of childhood poverty issues and increasing commitment to tackling them through anti-poverty policy and action.

. In partner countries and through its global programme of work, CHIP focuses on and draws attention to the ways in which poverty affects large numbers of urban and rural children, not only particularly disadvantaged groups such as street children or child-headed households. The CHIP programme emphasizes the importance of preventing poverty in the particularly vulnerable first years of life thereby reducing the chance of poverty persisting over an individual’s life course or through the generations. (Chip, 2012)

Reading through these website and listening to the professionals in the podcast have further broaden my knowledge on poverty and how it affects children in the early years and how it could cause along lasting damage and a reoccurring chain of poverty. I have also realize the need to address this issue seriously and how as a professional try as much to be a part of change. Children should have the opportunity grow, develop and learn attain their fullest potential, poverty should not be allowed to make it a choice to choose from.

                                                                     References


 Childhood Poverty Research and Policy Centre.

http://www.childhoodpoverty.org/

Fajar Hidayah  Foundation  http://www.fajarhidayah.com/en/photogallery/others/Fajar_Hidayah_brief_history.pdf

Liberty Foundation

www.libertyfoundation.org.uk