Ktantanim Balev

      As I reflect upon the competencies, skills, and professional development I attained during this class, I feel a significant shift from vision and inspirations to leadership and activism. In designing my capstone project, I had the opportunity to research and investigate local and international early childhood organizations that promote inclusion, support educators with access to resources and funds to support our daily work with young children and their families.  Also, as I was engaged in decision-making, research, and community of practice, I practiced some leadership skills and activism, two aspects that I set to myself as my long-term goals. I intend to utilize the skills I gained by reaching out to my local community for some professional development opportunities and working and advocating on behalf of children with diverse abilities. As a final activity for this class, I uploaded a new wordle that provided me with a visual change of my growth and aspirat...

  As my Capstone project focuses on fostering awareness and support for inclusion, I researched international organizations that will provide resources, research, and funding opportunities to promote my community of practice's goals and mission. The first organization is The Early Childhood Development Task Force (ECDtf). The mission of the ECDtf is to empowering the lives of young children with diverse abilities and their families by providing high-quality inclusion programs around the world ( http://ecdtf.org/ , n.d.). Another international organization is The Inclusive Education Initiative (IEI). This organization is a multi-donor trust fund supervised by the world bank (worldband.org, n.d.). IEI devotes in knowledge and resources to support inclusion around the globe (worldband.org, n.d.). Also, IEI focuses on promoting stakeholders and governments to fund and develop programs to support inclusion (worldband.org, n.d.). Lastly, the International Early Childhood Inclusion Instit...