Getting to Know Your International Contacts—Part 1

I am yet to establish contact with either of my conversation partners and the podcast participant, however, as soon as I am able to establish contact with either of them I will not hesitate to share with the class because I would have been so thrilled.

From the podcast, I realized that episode 10 that was the latest about two weeks ago is still the latest.  I am having the notion that the episodes are seldom changed.  Episode 10 is by Susan Lyon.  Susan, in her statement, stated that she had been an educator since age 22 teaching children having disabilities and emotional parlance.  She got fascinated by a young child’s idea of the word “city” and began to carefully consider the ideas that occupy children’s heart.  She has since worked on many projects aim on improving the living conditions of children.  She is the Director of the Innovative Teacher Project in San Francisco. This project involves a network of schools interested in the in-depth approach  to children.  Both public and private schools are participating and it started in 1994.  Currently, she is working on a rehab of a San Francisco structure into the first Italian immersion preschool. 

From the website, I read about childhood poverty in India.  India’s population is second only to China’s with an estimated 1.03 billion citizens in 2001 while about 260.2 million people live in poverty as at 1999 – 2000.  An estimated 400 million of the population are children between 0-18 years.  These children are living under very hard conditions as almost half of all children under age five are malnourished and 34 percent of new born babies are under significantly underweight.  There is a decrease in infant mortality from 80 per 1000 live births in 1990 to 69 in 2000; and enrolment of primary school-aged children rose from 68percent in 1992/1993 to 82 percent by the end of the decade; this is an indication of important achievements in health and education sectors.  However, India still has the largest numbers of working children in the world, with about one third of the children below 16 years of age.  In all of these, female children are seriously impacted as a result of stark inequalities in child wellbeing based on gender, class and caste.

The disadvantaged cycle continues over and over again as it starts at birth, continues through childhood to motherhood and to the next generation while it is also reflecting in the inferior health and educational status of women, the high maternal mortality rate, the neglected of the girl child and subsequent higher participation in the child labor force.  This shows that female children are less valued than their male counterpart and this could be damaging to a nation as mothers stay longer with children (male and female) than fathers.

Childhood Poverty Research and Policy Centre’s page (http://www.childhoodpoverty.org/)