UNICEF has always been an organization that I have known to have the interest of families and children at the heart of everything that they do. When I was a senior in high school (not so long ago) I remember being the Vice President of a community service club where one of the projects was to go "Trick-or-Treating" for UNICEF. It was at that time when I had my first brush with the work that they do and knew that it was a great cause for our organization to support.
For this assignment I chose the region of Latin America and the Caribbean. I chose this area mainly because my roots lie in the Caribbean and I wanted to find out what resources UNICEF offered within this region. The Latin America & Caribbean region covers the countries of Panama, Jamaica, Haiti, Mexico, Cuba, Chile, Brazil, Dominican Republic, Columbia, Costa Rica and other South American and islands of the Caribbean in this region. Within these regions UNICEF focuses on Nutrition, Education, Protection, Equal Opportunity, and a Clean and Safe Environment. There are many challenges within this region that include lack of electricity (due to hurricane damage, and other tropical storms), starvation and dehydration due to food shortages and lack of access to proper nutrition and access to clean water. There is also an issue of proper refuge for the migrants that are within these regions, especially those that are indigenous to the land, along with receiving proper education for the children that reside in these areas. UNICEF is set to counteract many of these negative pitfalls, and does so through providing educational programs that will improve learning and skills development and provide early childhood development programs for young children; establish programs geared towards reducing malnutrition and eliminating the transformation of life threatening diseases (such as HIV), and even furthering the cause of making sure that the community has access to programs that will help rebuild the overall community for those people that are indigenous to the land.
Personally, I know that these resources will not only help provide passageways for a healthier living environment, but I know that it will also provide access to resources that will help to better the educational development of the children within the region. I personally know that when children and their families have access to the proper resources and are not spending their days and nights worried about the basic needs for survival that the children have a better success rate in focusing on their educational growth and development. Our resource for this week pointed out that children who reside within areas that have a very low income or and environment that is needing the basic necessities that they have a greater chance of experiencing behavioral problems (Trustees of Columbia University, 2010). We as educators have the obligation to point children and their families to those resources that will make a positive impact the children's lives and the community to which we serve
Reference:
Trustees of Columbia University, The. (2010). National Center Center for Children Children in PovertyPoverty (NCCP). Retrieved from: http://www.nccp.org/publications/pub_882.html
Iesha,
ReplyDeleteGreat post! I your country in the Caribbean struggled with poor health and nutrition that often was attributed to weather such as hurricanes. In the USA, we are used to hurricane damage to surrounding being fixed relatively quickly within a few days to a few weeks, and if not, then we are relocated. I know this isn;t for everyone but most of us are taken care of. The people who live through hurricane damage in these countries have to live with the damage for months if not years making their living situation unsafe and unhealthy. In my country, El Salvador, the biggest issue was violence. The gang violence is so bad people are confined to their homes and cannot leave to work or to buy what they need to survive. Either way, both countries are sad cases.
Great post!
Jill
Hi Iesha,
ReplyDeleteWhen I looked into UNICEF in Barbados (my home), they do other work such as advocating and teaching for alternatives amongst youths to promote positive conflict resolution. We have been blessed for many years not to have a full impact of hurricanes, I pray for continual protection; however, we do have other problems in which they aid us with. Such as some funding to help with individuals from low-income families live a better and healthier lifestyle. Growing up I was never aware these types of organizations were in Barbados. Thank you for sharing.