Sub-Sahara Africa, ECDVU

http://www.ecdvu.org/ssa/index.php

For this weeks’ blog assignment I reviewed the website of ECDVU: SSA (Early Childhood Development Virtual University, Sub-Saharan Africa). This site instantly caught my eye because the first thing they included in their site is their mission statement, which reads: “to further develop African ECD leadership capacity as a key strategy in support of child, family, and community well-being and broader social and economic development” (ECDVU: SSA, 2005).

This website was extremely beneficial in showing what current research is being conducted by students internationally. “Assignments, major projects, and theses focus on addressing pressing ECD issues within countries and on building the ECD literature for Africa” (ECDVU: SSA. 2005). There were a number of interesting and necessary research studies being conducted, but I have chosen just a few topics to share. Training programs for Ghana volunteers, assessing the quality of child services, nutrition in babies in motherless homes, supervision of early childhood education, culturally and developmentally appropriate practices, involving fathers in meaningful ways, as well as improving childcare quality through parent enrichment and training of trainers (ECDVU: SSA, 2005).

One new fact that I learned from this site is how participants become involved in this organization. Participants must be nominated from within the current members. Their inclusion or acceptance is based on “achieving inter-sectoral, multi-organizational representation, and evidence of individual commitment to child well-being and broader social development within the country” (ECDVU: SSA, 2005). Being nominated by current members limits the number of nominations possible, but I think that it also encourages networking and in turn the sharing of ideas. Networking is very important when large-scale changes are desired, and especially if those changes are to be positive and long lasting.

The final area that I researched on this site was called ECDVU Cohort Generated Country Reports. I selected the country of Nigeria to research further. Nigeria is an area of interest to me because of their high malnutrition and low immunizations. I learned from this area, also, that Nigeria has a high under 5 years mortality rate; in 1960 there were 207 deaths compared to in 1999 there were 178 (ECDVU: SSA, 2005). These numbers are not that different, but the years between them occurring are. Advances have been made in medicine, health, and awareness and I feel that those advances should have been applied to Nigeria by 1999. In 1975 IBHS (Integrated Basic Health Scheme) was implemented to control childhood and adult diseases, but “success was abysmal” (ECDVU: SSA, 2005). In 1996 EPI (Expanded Programme on Immunizations), NPI (National Programme on Immunizations), and RBM (Roll Back Malaria) began working together and they have had more success (ECDVU: SSA, 2005).

I will be returning to this site soon. Especially because I am interested in reading more about their ‘Academic Program Overview’ but it is currently being updated.