Website That Addresses Childhood Poverty

      The National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP) http://www.nccp.org  is a public policy center that focuses on helping poor families and children in the areas of health, welfare, and financial security.  The NCCP goal is to influence policy on the state and national level by providing research data that substantiates the need for positive change for impoverished families.  The visions for the organization are:

·       Family economic security

·       Strong, nurturing families

·       Healthy child development

Under the State profile section on the website readers can enter the name of a state and statistical information will populate showing the poverty demographics for that state.  There is also Early Childhood information in this section that provides health, nutrition, and educational policies that have been implemented in a particular state.  The Data Tools section allows users to track and tabulate the health risk of children and also the state of mental health.   Viewers can research publications by title, date, project, or by the topic.  There are numerous Fact Sheets provided so information can be referenced easily. One interesting project that I found under the Project tab was exploring the effectiveness of housing subsidies on child development.  The research showed that when families have housing assistance, it provides stability for the family because they are not experiencing frequent evictions and the stress level is reduced for children and families.  The NCCP website is an early childhood professional’s dream because it provides a variety of useful information and its motto is “Putting Research to Work for Children and Families” and that should be our focus!

 

A Great Early Childhood Website

     The website I found most interesting and helpful is http://www.naeyc.org  (National Association for the Education of Young Children) because this site covers many facets of the early childhood field.  This website offers information about publications, accreditations, professional development, conferences, public policy, and various topics concerning early childhood issues.  NAEYC’s focus is protecting the rights and needs of all children educationally and their developmental growth.

            On the website was the article “Research News You Can Use: More threats to Preschoolers’ Play” which stated the importance of big body play on school readiness (Snow, 2012).  Research shows that young children who live in poverty are least likely to experience big body play because their parents fear the dangers of the neighborhood and there is a lack of funding for quality playgrounds (Snow, 2012).  Teachers are often faced with a dilemma because they under pressure to stress academics instead of play (Snow, 2012).  Play is instrumental in the development of young children and it needs to be taken more seriously.

 

References

Snow, K. (2012). Research news you can use: More threats to preschoolers' play. Retrieved

            from http://www.naeyc.org/

 

Website Dedicated to Helping Children

     When researching the websites that involved helping children I selected The Global Fund for Children website: https://www.globalfundforchildren.org because this organization is trying to help children around the world regain their childhood.  Some children are made to work jobs at markets or forced into human trafficking instead of being allowed to receive an education.  This program really gets involved and supports grassroots organizers in order to make sure that there is an existing personal connection with the actual people that need help.  Funding is given to these community organizers in order to help children in crisis.  Money, leadership workshops, and management services are provided to ensure that the regions are strengthened.  Some of the regions served are Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, North America, Middle East and North Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean.

            This site also features news stories about how children are being helped around the world and these stories are very uplifting.  There is also a section on the website that is titled “Get Involved” which urges readers to get involved in various ways such as; subscribing to the blog, donating money, buying books(percentage of proceeds helps children), or subscribed to the newsletter.  One of the articles I read was about the trafficking of children and how effective steps were taken to reintegrate these children back into the community.