Sharing Web Resources #3

When explore the Save our Children website, one of the outside links I explored was to the giving page of the organization. I found this very interesting because you can choose what gift you want to donate. You aren't just donating money and the organization decides what to do with it, you get to decide what you want to with it. For example, for $30 you can choose to donate/sponsor art and music supplies and for $120 you can donate/sponsor 2 goats. You could also sponsor a child for only $28 a month, and the child can be someone in the United States or in another country. 

While searching the site, I came across one of the Save the Children's initiative to advocate for better funding for our children and early childhood program. Something new I found was the letter below that people can send to our government in order to address the concerns of lack of high-quality programs for low-income families (one of our big topics this week).  

Subject: Support the Strong Start for America's Children Act

As a citizen concerned about the well-being of our nation’s children, I ask for your support of H.R. 3461 / S. 1697, the Strong Start for America's Children Act.

Every child deserves a strong start in life -- and that includes quality early education. Yet many babies and young children lack the early opportunities they need to support their development from birth to kindergarten. In the United States, nearly one in four children live in poverty, and millions of low-income families lack access to high-quality, affordable preschool programs. Research shows that four-year-olds from poor families are an average of 18 months behind other children their age -- the developmental equivalent of middle-income two-and-a-half year-olds.

Studies have found that high-quality preschool leads to a wide range of short- and long-term benefits, including better educational outcomes, stronger job earnings, and lower levels of crime and delinquency. In fact, a Brookings Institution study found that a comprehensive national early childhood education program would add $2 trillion to the country’ annual GDP within a generation.

That is why I support the Strong Start for America's Children Act. It is a bold, 10-year innovative federal-state partnership to expand and improve early learning opportunities for children from birth to five. The legislation would also create a new Early Head Start partnership with child care to improve the quality of care for infants and toddlers.

I urge you to cosponsor this commonsense bill. I look forward to your response on this important issue.

This helped add to my understand that there is a professional organization that is lobbying and advocating for our children and their right of having equal opportunities to attend a high quality early childhood program regardless of the income. this initiative will also have a long term plan in helping our children expand early learning opportunities for our children. It also gave me the insight of that as early childhood professionals, we aren't alone in this field, and that there are organizations out there that are in this fight with us to improve the quality of early childhood education.

Save the Children. (2015). Advocate for our Children. Retrieved from http://www.savethechildren.org/