Getting to Know your International Contacts

I was hopeful that I had found a great way to get connected with an early childhood professional outside the US, but it has proven to be a bust.  My college professor from Cameroon, Africa no longer keeps in contact with her old friends and colleagues abroad.  She did, however, give me the email address of another college professor that makes many trips to China each year. 

When I contacted this professor, she initially said she would be happy to help.  She runs a program that allows college students at Eastern Michigan University to do their student teaching experience abroad in China.  The program started the year after I graduated, but it sounded very interesting!  She told me that she had many contacts that she could connect me with but wanted an overview of what I needed from them before she would consent.  I explained the blog assignment and told her I would need to be in email communications with the EC professional weekly.  She thought that was too much to ask of one of her students or colleagues and decided she could not help me.  I tried one last time and told her that I would try my best to look ahead at the assignments and consolidate my questions to one or two emails.  She said she was hesitant to ask for a favor from a student or colleague without knowing the exact specifications and decided not to help me.  What a disappointment!  I was very excited when I found her as a resource but quite let down when she told me she could not help.

I decided that I was going to need to do the alternate assignment but was again disappointed to see that the links we were given did not work.  I feel like I've done so much and have very little to show for it!  Since I got the error message “URL not found on this server” for the World Forum Foundation and the error message “Google could not find this website” for the Childhood Poverty Research and Policy page, I moved on to yet another option.  I explored the Save the Children website as a very last resort.  Save the Children is working in 120 countries around the world to give kids a healthy start.  The organization has a place for people to donate to their fund.  You can donate to sponsor a child or you can purchase things like animals, food, or even soccer balls.  One donation idea that I thought was very cool was “Wedding Favors”.  A couple donates to the fund instead of having favors for each guest at the wedding.  In exchange, Save the Children sends cards to place on tables that thank guests for the donation in their name and detail what their monetary donation means to the life of a child.