Press Release: 2024-05-08

The Alliance blogs about the Early Childhood Agenda

We want to thank the Alliance for Early Success for blogging about The Early Childhood Agenda!

The blog tells the behind-the-scenes story of how The Early Childhood Agenda evolved from our work developing a new strategic plan for Strategies for Children. The Agenda was also informed by our work on The 9:30 Call, which taught us that it is possible to do advocacy work with a large, geographically diverse, statewide coalition.

The organizations and individuals who joined the Agenda created its 10 priorities for “building a stronger early childhood system over the next two years.”

The Agenda’s work has been a true team effort. As the Alliance’s blog says, “To succeed, the Agenda has had to achieve two goals: include everyone and build trust by including everyone’s ideas.”

“ ‘This is something we heard a lot in our conversation with the Alliance for Early Success,’ Marisa Fear, Strategies’ director of policy, says. ‘It’s important to shift away from having conversations with the usual suspects who have always held power in organizations and focus on people who are actually impacted by the issues and who have that lived experience.’ ”

Another goal was to ensure that “the people who are closest to children—parents and providers—are at the center of the conversation. To achieve this, Fear and other Strategies staffers spent time recruiting lived experience leaders such as parents and early childhood providers. Agenda meetings also included the use of software that let everyone contribute.”

Tomorrow the Agenda’s work will continue with a meeting at Polar Park in Worcester, Mass. This event is at capacity, but we’ll take photos and share a blog about the event next week.

So please check out the Alliance’s blog and visit the Alliance website for early childhood policy updates from all 50 states.

Stay tuned to this blog because there’ll be more information about the work of the The Early Childhood Agenda!