Getting to Know My International Contacts—Part 1

So finally I heard back from one out of the two people I contacted!! I was excited yet sad at the same time. I was excited because I get to learn more about early childhood in Canada. On the other hand, the lady I contacted from Nigeria still has not responded to me so I decided to move on. I was able to contact someone from a group I am part of on LinkedIn. It is an international early childhood group; I kept asking myself why I did not think of contacting someone from the group previously. I was able to get in contact with someone from Italy, he responded very quickly to my email. So although I could not get in contact with someone from Nigeria I was able to have two international contacts which Is still what I wanted.

My first contact’s name is Mr. Don Giesbrecht from Canada.  He is the President and CEO of the Canadian Child Care Federation. He is also the Executive Director of Assiniboine Children’s Centre (ACC) in Winnipeg. Don has been President of the CCCF since March 2006 and was appointed to the Federal Government’s Ministerial Advisory Committee on Child Care Spaces in September 2007.  He has also been working with the CCCF on diversifying its funding and

revenue base and has been very active in its fund development work.

My second contact’s name is Mr. Gianluca Grassi from Italy. Mr. Grassi works for Reggio nel Mondo and is the communication manager. He loves to write and loves working with children.

Unfortunately, both of my contacts have yet to respond to me so I was unable to get issues on poverty from them and instead went on the website of the Childhood Poverty Research and Policy Centre’s page. I decided to read about childhood poverty in Mongolia. From reading about Mongolia, I learned that some children never even make it to school. I didn’t know Mongolia could reach temperatures as low as -30-40 degrees which saddened me to know that children are on the street in those temperatures. However, it was good to know that the government has developed plans to reduce poverty in Mongolia. I just hope that the plans are still being put into action.