So, I went to the podcast website. Barnabas Otaala's episode tells a story about a village in Namibia. The villagers were in need of a lot of things because they were so poor but more importantly, they found that a girl was HIV positive. Her father didn’t want to tell the fact to the villagers because they might dispel him. I believe his phenomenon is based in poverty, but I learned that poverty doesn’t only mean not having enough food, supplies, and money to go to hospitals. It also influences on how people think and what they think of as their priorities.
Since I haven’t got a reply from my podcast, I studied about poverty in India at the website of the Childhood Poverty Research and Policy Centre because a lot of Indian people live in my neighborhood. India had been suffering from poverty but a lot of programs reduced the rate of poverty there. Yet, “[a]lmost half of all children (about 62 million) under the age of five are malnourished and 34 percent of new-borns are significantly underweight” (CHIP, 2012, p. 1) Improvement is that infant mortality rate has dropped and the enrolment of primary school-aged children rose. However, India still has 20 % of the world’s out-of school children. Caste, class, ethnicity and gender inequity impede improvement in certain groups or states. While urbanization has been supporting their economy, it “result[ed] in new health problems, such as HIV/AIDS, which is placing greater strains on society and the health of the poor in particular” (CHIP, 2012, p. 1). Even though improvement is obvious, they have more places to help, fields to help further, and new issues to solve. I think that the cooperation of government and international organizations is the key for India’s future.
Reference
CHIP. (2012). Country Overviews. Retrieved on March 16, 2012, from http://www.childhoodpoverty.org/index.php?action=countryo
I agree, that it takes cooperation between agencies and the government to come up with a unified plan .. Poverty will not be less of an issue if they do not work together and cross some of the class boundaries that are still strong in India.
ReplyDeleteYou've done a great job as always Aya. You information is very informative. It has become a task to get responses for me but I'm not giving up. I did recieve a brochure from and intern program I'm interest in applying for, and making plans to go visit in the next year or so. I want to get more involved with whats going on in our field and do my best to help not only children but the parent of the children as well. Keep in touch.
ReplyDeleteAya,
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing! Were you able to find out any helpful information while you were a part of the community of preschool teachers in Japan? I also agree with both you and Kathy about it taking cooperation from all parties to come up with a unified plan. I believe that it is important that we remember what Dr. Grace said, and that is that we must be a voice and we must be consistent while doing so.
Aya,
ReplyDeleteThank you for the informative post. It amazes me how many children in India aren't being provided with an education. The government organizations must work together in order to solve the poverty issue.
The statistics on poverty are alarmingly high. It is very sad there are so many people in the world suffering. I think if educators all over the world begin to put their heads together and dedicate themselves to the issue, we could make a difference.
ReplyDeleteI am sorry to hear you are not getting much feedback from your group of Japanese early childhood educators. Keep trying, I feel you can really learn a lot from these connections and look forward to hearing about it.