The person I want to profile is someone that I don’t know personally but professionally. For privacy purpose I will call her MS. D. I have known her for over five years and have seen the work she has done for early childhood. She works as an Early Childhood Education Specialist, Technical Advisor and Consult for Black Child Development Institute organization. She is also a sorority sister in the AKA sorority. She is someone that I aspire to be when it comes to the well-being of all children especially in the state of Georgia.
Ms. D is very active in the early childhood community and is always doing advocacy for either for the organization she works for or her sorority. I met Ms. D over five years ago during a committee meeting regarding the proposal of starting an early childhood center in the local school system career academy. This was a very hot issue because many child care business owners did not approve of this center coming into the school system to take business away from them. So Ms. D suggested that the child care owners/directors be invited to the committee meeting so that they could share their disapproval of the center. Ms. D chaired the meeting and presented the childcare owners with detail information why it was important for the school system career academy open up an early learning center. The reason she gave was that the high school students that were interested in early childhood education can use this center as lab classrooms so that the students can learn how to work with children 2 – 5 years old. After a few meetings most of the owners agreed to the proposal and then I was chosen as the only member to be on the board because the funding partners needed to see an early care provider listed and contributed to the issue. I have also seen Ms. D with her sorority work with stakeholders and policy makers voicing their opinions and giving information to politicians at the capitol building before they make decisions on funding for early childhood education. I have also seen several advocacy efforts made on behalf of BCDI-Atlanta to educators encouraging them to write letters to the members of congress and senators on any issues that affected early childhood education. They fought for increase funding for parents to acquire child care assistance so that their children could attend early child care.
Ms. D is always advocating for anything that is related to children. She works as a trainer, technical advisor and is always involved in any activities that have an impact on early childhood education in Georgia. She is very involved in her church that does a variety of activities such as youth explosions. She works with the sheriff department providing under privilege children with back to school supplies and signed several petition regarding increase funding for early care and professional training for teachers. She also signed petitions to stop the violence against women and children. Some of the advocacy efforts that I have been involved in was brought to my attention by Ms. D. I must say that I became more involved with advocacy efforts for the early childhood field because of Ms. D, she convinced me that we don’t stand up and voice our opinions, sign petitions and let others know the importance about a quality early childhood education.
I am very passionate about children and believe that we can and should constantly work on advocacy projects that have an effect of children and families. Protecting the rights of children that cannot representative themselves is the right thing to do. Advocating is a social and civic duty of every early care educator. I believe I must continue to work with people such as MS. D to make a difference in this state.
Monthly Archives: June 2014
Using Social Media to Get Connected”
“Using Social Media to Get Connected”
Social media is something that took me awhile to get involved with. I started out with a Facebook page because of family in several states and countries. It was a great way for us to share events about our lives with each other. At first, the only people I my information with was my siblings, cousins and children but now I have friends and professional associates. I recently start liking links on various early childhood education websites so I have engaged my passion for early childhood with my personal information. I also have used Tumblr and YouTube for course assignments. I have also used Facebook to set up a page for my travel agency business. I don’t have a twitter or Instagram account and really not sure if I want to get one.
I believe that Facebook has become a very effective tool when advocating because most business now have a Facebook page. These businesses utilize Facebook when marketing and advertising and invites viewers to like or join their page. I also believe that YouTube is a great resource and tool to use for any organization to utilize because of the video feature. I am aware to many nonprofit organizations that utilize the video feature of YouTube especially for professional development training and role play.
Personally, I believe that social media is the new advertising and marketing tool and will be even more effective because of all the new technology and smartphones. I believe that just about anyone of these social media sites is a great tool to inspire people to advocate for any issue. Just about everyone have a social media account so when you share the objective issue with people on Facebook, twitter, Instagram etc., you are sharing the information with all the friends and family of everyone that like the page.
A great example of how effective social media have proven to be the best marketing tool is the 2008 elections when now President Obama as Candidate Obama utilized all the social media sights to share his vision for the country and encourage people of all ages, races, religions to vote for him. Another way is how NAEYC, Zero To Three and many other nonprofit organizations advocated to congress to increase funding for early childhood education. They utilized social media and their websites educating and informing anyone they could reach to sign petitions, write letters and make phone calls to members of congress, senators and governors. Social medial has evolved from many years back and it is the best way to market, advertise and advocate.
If any of my colleagues have a twitter account and can share how to effectively use it with compromising my integrity, I would appreciate it?
Advocacy Messages
Advocacy Messages
1. Increase Funding for early childhood education:
“We know more now than ever before about how young brains develop and just how important the first three years are to a child’s later success. We know the value of starting early with high-quality early learning programs, and we are much too familiar with the cost of failure” (saportareport.com).
I believe this message is inspiring because the focus is on the importance of early care and education. We need to ensure that all children in the first three years of their lives have the opportunity to attend a high quality early care program. How can we advocate for increase funding for children that don’t have the opportunity to attend and early childhood program?
2. Addressing Maternal Depression in Home Visiting Programs:
Current Issues and Innovative Approaches
“With the expansion of home visiting through the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program (MIECHV), much attention has focused on how to make home visiting programs more effective. Helping depressed mothers in home visiting has emerged as a promising way to enhance outcomes and improve the lives of families served by these programs. This issue of Zero to Three presents a series of articles that provide thoughtful reviews of important topics involving maternal depression and home visiting, and highlights innovative approaches to prevention and treatment” (Zerotothree.org).
This advertising inspires me because maternal depression is very real and I believe that it is important for us to address an increase in home visiting programs. There are many mothers that suffer from postpartum depressing and I believe that if home visiting programs are increased many mothers and infants will receive more quality home care.
3. Georgia Wins $51.7M in Early Learning Challenge
“In December 2013, Georgia won $51.7M from the Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge (ELC) Grant program. The ELC will allow Georgia to not only better educate and care for its children, but better equip teachers with professional development and continuing education opportunities. To learn more about Georgia’s ELC grant, click here” (decal.ga.us).
This is very inspiring to me because it means that early childhood education in Georgia will be improved. It also means that teachers will be better educated and prepared to work with children in the early care programs across the state of Georgia.
Reference
http://decal.ga.gov/Default.aspx#3
http://saportareport.com/blog/2014/03/providing-quality-childcare-can-help-poor-reach-middle
class/
http://www.zerotothree.org/
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