Getting to Know Your International Contacts-Part 1

This week I chose to listen to the podcast from the World Forum Foundation presented by Delfena Mitchell.
Delfena Mitchell is Director of the Liberty Children’s Home, on the outskirts of Belize City. This program opened in the summer of 2005 and is licensed to house up to 40 children, predominantly between birth to 5 years of age. However, older children who have younger siblings in care are and will always be accommodated.All of the children at the care center have been abandoned, abused or orphaned and many have disabilities, special needs or are HIV positive. Further information on this program is available at www.libertyfoundation.org.uk

What I have learned do far from the podcast is that Joseph is a nine years old boy that came to them about nine months ago. When he came to them, he hadn't spoken in over a year because his situation where he was living in was really bad. He was physically abused and he observed his sister and because of that he just shut down and didn't speak for over a year. He came to them with his six other brothers and sisters. At first, what they did with him was just trying to home school him there under the compound for a little bit, then they enrolled him in school out of town, but after the first week, he was kicked out of school and sent home because he seem to have a problem with understanding. One day she took him horse back riding with her and they would go on a 30 minutes horse back ride, so he was on the horse behind her on the same horse. They were riding and all of sudden he started talking and telling her about his grandmother that use to beat him with a stick and how when he was hungry and he wanted to eat, he had to take his food underneath his bed to eat so that the other children in the house or the adults wouldn't take his food away from him. He just started talking about his uncle that he misses and is gone away. Although he was talking, she couldn't understand everything he was saying because it was like he was regressed at his age. The important thing that got her excited was that he started talking again. They finished their ride and things went back to normal and he stopped talking again, but over a period of weeks he would start saying a couple of words. In the meantime, we were just allowing him to have a couple of words in our little informal session of training of schooling and then they would allow him time to be in the gardens on the compound because he liked to be outdoors. With a combination of Joseph going back to school and the medication in a matter of weeks you can see the change in him where he started talking and he was talking a mile a minute. Joseph speaks now and even the kids stop to listen to him because everybody was so use to him not saying anything. When he has anything to say we all want to hear what he has to say.

My new insights and information about the issues of poverty in China is that it has made major strides in poverty reduction in recent years. The economic growth being slower in Western China has cause it to be poorer than Eastern China. China has had helped to reduce chronic poverty due to the fact that it has transition from a centrally planned to a globalized market economy. China receives more foreign investment than any other country in the world except for the US.