Farewell Message

Throughout this program I learned many good things.   

The first thing that I learned was that we need to have a vision in order to make change happen.  

Second I learned that many people share the same passion and interests and that we should recognize that and work together to achieve the common goals. 

 Last, I learned the importance of collaboration and how to collaborate with other to achieve your goals.

My ultimate goal is to impact the quality of services offered in my state by advocacy, training and education to teachers, directors, families, and community people.  I want to influence child care licensing regulations to raise the bar of quality.  I want to lower child-teacher ratios, create infant /toddler, preschool and school age credentials and make them mandatory and make more stringent health and safety regulations.    

Finally, the most expected time during the past two years.  We have completed all the requirements of our M.S degree in early childhood studies. First of all, I want to thank my professor.  Dr. Teri, thank you for your guidance and feedback every week. Without your detailed comments and suggestions the outcome would have been different than the one obtained. Thank you very much for your time and patience and I will always be very grateful for your help.  

 

To all my colleagues, 

Thank you for taking the time of reading my discussion boards and blogs and for providing me with ideas and guidance week after week.  Your expertise, knowledge and experience were a great help during my Capstone Project process.  I am very impressed with everyone’s passion for the field and with all your challenge statements and responses.  I wish you all success in your future endeavor and I hope to finally meet you during graduation.

 Dear Colleagues do not hesitate to contact me if you need help with your advocacy efforts

813-361-7160

marta.laos@hotmail.com

I hope we can keep in touch and continue to share resources and efforts.

International Organizations

The Childfund Mission

• To help deprived, excluded and vulnerable children living in poverty have the capacity to become young adults, parents and leaders who bring lasting and positive change to their communities.
• To promote societies whose individuals and institutions participate in valuing, protecting, and advancing the worth and the rights of children.

I love this organization because they fight poverty and try to provide solutions for this children to become successful citizens of their countries.

This organization have many vacancies.  However there were two vacancies that caught my attention.

 PROGRAM MANAGER - GUATEMALA (ENGLISH/SPANISH) (302264-818)

  PROGRAM MANAGER - ECUADOR (ENGLISH/SPANISH) (302282-818)

These two positions are responsible for leadership for the effective planning, implementation, monitoring, sharing lessons learned, tracking and reporting on all program activities including the  development of plans and proposals, networks and partnerships based on organization’s program approach. 

I believe I have the experience and qualifications for this job because I am bilingual English/Spanish and have worked  and I work  with families in poverty.  Also, this program degree has prepared us well for taking on in challenges such as this one.  

The RISE Institute is committed to helping nations affected by conflicts or severe poverty to provide high-quality educational opportunities for young children, youth and families. RISE assists countries to develop comprehensive, culturally appropriate and effective policies, programs and evaluation systems for early childhood development, formal and non-formal education, girl's and women's education, and workforce development.

Unfortunately I was not able to find career opportunities posted on their websites.  However I am very intrigued with what this organization offers and their work.

 ICRI envisions a world in which all children and families are able to fulfill their greatest potential. We work towards this goal by focusing on:

Early Childhood Care and Education

All children deserve access to high quality, stimulating, developmentally appropriate early childhood care and education. We believe that early intervention promotes the healthy growth and development not just of individual children, but of entire communities.

Children’s Rights

Children must be allowed to live safe and stable lives, free from abuse and violence. We believe that recognizing and protecting children’s rights is an essential step towards ensuring human rights for all.

Empowerment of Women and Girls

Women and girls must be allowed to advance themselves and their communities without discrimination, exploitation, or gender-based violence. We believe that investing in young women and girls is one of the most effective means of transforming society.

Maternal and Child Health

Women and children must have access to health interventions that allow them to physically and mentally thrive. We believe that HIV/AIDS and other public health challenges must be addressed at every opportunity, in order to ensure the wellbeing of individual women and children as well as the larger communities in which they live.

At this time they only have a marketing internship job available.  However, I imagine than in the future there can be some jobs available that I can qualified for.

National/Federal Organizations of Community of Practice

The three organizations that I am most interested in working with in the future are

 The Council for Professional Recognition promotes improved performance and recognition of professionals in the early childhood education of children aged birth to 5 years old. I am interested in this organization because I am passionate about Training and professional development and this agency have made an impact in the life of many teachers.

No vacancy available at this time.

However, I believe I am a good candidate for this agency because I am already one of their Professional Development Specialists and I am very familiar with the CDA process.  Also, because I have the passion, the knowledge and skills to work in area of the early childhood field.

                                                                    

This organization is one of my favorite because they advocate for the age group I am most passionate about.  I believe they do a wonderful work in the field in regards of the well being of infants and toddlers. 

They currently have an opening for a training specialist that I am very excited about.  The position is focus on work with the Early Head Start National Resource Center.  As an Education Manager for an Early Head Start program this opportunity sounds really interesting.  Also, the training specialist will focus on coordinating training events and conferences for early head start leadership.  They require a M.S degree in Early Childhood education which I am hoping to obtain soon.  I will definitely keep my eyes on this organization since I learned they have this kind of opportunities.

 NAEYC is the biggest organization in the world working on behalf the well-being of children.  I am interested in them because I believe that all early childhood programs should be held at the high quality such NAEYC.

I am interested in becoming a NAEYC assessor in the future.  At this time they are taking applications for next year.  The applications will be reviewed at the beginning of 2014.  This is a contractor job in which I will have to be familiar with NAEYC accreditation and I will have to pass training and reliability test.  It is important to be knowledgeable about developmentally appropriate practices and child development in order to be successful on this position.