Global Initiatives for Children

"The Center's Global Children’s Initiative has begun to build a portfolio of activities in three domains: early childhood development; mental health; and children in crisis and conflict situations" (Harvard, 2012). Through this work, advocates are making efforts to get more people engaged in making investments in the earliest years of life. Dr. Jack P. Shonkoff, director of the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard, has launched a national campaign against ‘‘toxic stress’’ in childhood. In an interview he responded to a question regarding asking for political support for additional human services support for children and families, "What’s exciting about the biology is it takes it out of the political realm and asks us how it is that poverty and maltreatment result in problems later and how we could prevent that. It offers more ideas for new solutions and new approaches, rather than just the same old political arguments. Everybody wins if we prevent toxic stress in young children, and everybody loses if we don’t" (Shonkoff, 2012). We know that children who live in stressful living conditions are under chronic stress, and therefore, are susceptible for low self-esteem issues, delayed or challenges in learning, etc. If we don't work to break the barriers of poverty and chronic stress for parents and families, we will all lose.

This brings me to the podcast I listened to in which Delfena Mitchell, Director of the Liberty Children's Home in Belize City, described the condition in which children typically arrive at the Liberty orphanage. The children "come broken down and have to heal" (World Forum). Delfena described this area of Central America as being #1 in incidences of child abuse. Dr. Eck stated, "Liberty should be the blueprint for other orphanages"
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsMr1Su-nzo). Caregivers working at Liberty expressed passion, understanding and care for the children they work with every day.

Gunther Fink, Assistant Professor of International Health Economics at Harvard University worked on an assessment tool for all children. Through his study he declared, “Where you are at age 6, before you enter school, predicts so many things in your life, and yet we have no way of comparing one country to another.” We need to take a look at children's inequalities across the globe to assess the ways in which to best serve all children. Through the Global Children's Initiative work, "we" have made great strides toward these efforts.


References:

http://developingchild.harvard.edu/activities/global_initiative/global_children_s_initiative__activities/
 
http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/health/articles/2012/02/27/targeting_toxic_stress_in_children/

http://www.worldforumfoundation.org/wf/radio.php

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsMr1Su-nzo.