Over the past four centuries, racist policies in our country have been central to the creation of pervasive systems, practices, and perceptions that rob and constrain children of color from birth—generation after generation.
So we at the Alliance for Early Success believe the only way we’ll achieve our vision is through policy changes that dismantle the structural racism that causes disparity from the beginning. As we work toward our mission of creating an early childhood policy advocacy community that secures the policies and investments essential for every young child to thrive, we know we must center racial equity.
Allies for Antiracism is our commitment to centering racial equity in our strategic planning and in the community building that is central to our work.
Our Allies for Antiracism initiative has three pillars:
We will continually name the racism that permeates all aspects of the opportunities to succeed for many of our nation’s children and families.
We will continually learn and self-assess as professionals and as an organization.
We will continually collaborate with state allies and the national organizations that support their work to hear where they are and what they need, and will follow through with technical efforts to help them pursue policies that dismantle racism and undo racial disparities.
The Alliance began this journey in 2015 when we convened a racial equity advisory group to guide the revision of our policy framework, and we are continuing the learning, conversation, and practice that will help us—and the early childhood allies in our national community—get increasingly effective in centering racial equity. In 2022, we updated the Alliance Theory of Change to explicitly name structural racism and to center antiracism in our work.
The Alliance’s racial equity work includes:
Operationalizing Equity, a six-month intensive launched in 2021 for advocacy organization leadership.
An Emerging Early Childhood Policy Professionals of Color peer network with the objective of offering a meaningful and supportive network for young early childhood advocates of color and to build a pipeline of diverse leaders.
Hosting national voices on structural racism—such as Dr. Ibram Kendi and Dr. Joia Crear-Perry—to address our network. We continue to spotlight leaders on issues such as maternal health disparities and birth equity as part of our National Issues > State Action webinar series.
Advancing the disaggregation of racial data in the analysis of early childhood and family support policy.
Centering racial equity as foundational in the reinvention of the country’s early care and education system in our policy recommendations and “big-bet” Child Care NEXT initiative.
Facilitating peer-to-peer learning between states and providing ongoing resources for operationalizing racial equity in early childhood policy advocacy.
Establishing new grant projects and programs to support states in their efforts to build coalitions and hear voices with lived experience.
Several communities of practice that equip participants to strengthen their organization’s ability to center proximate voices and work with their communities in more trauma-informed, non-extractive ways.
Continuing our ongoing all-staff racial equity self-development to ensure we all—as individuals and professionals—continually strengthen our ability to see and address structural racism.
It is no secret that early childhood educators face challenges in Wisconsin and beyond, and yet plans to make the system more equitable are often missing the voices of these practitioners themselves. In Wisconsin, a new study that centers the voices of Wisconsin early educators from traditionally marginalized groups is already having an impact on policy in the state.
The Alliance Hosts 200 grantees for three days of reflection, discussion, and connecting insights to their work as individuals, leaders, and early childhood
advocates.
JUNETEENTH 2024 REFLECTION The Alliance for Early Success is joining our neighbors in a celebration of freedom and a renewed commitment to dismantling the pervasive legacy of slavery.
CELEBRATING BLACK MATERNAL HEALTH WEEK 2024 As we observe Black Maternal Health Week 2024, Alliance for Early Success Human Resources consultant Annette Richards shares her experience becoming grandmother twice in the calming presence of doulas.
In our new report, Child Care Policy Roadmap 2023, we highlight policies enacted in states – red, blue, and purple – that serve as building blocks for a transformative child care system. It builds on a policy roadmap released several years ago that laid out the major areas of work that all states need to take on to transform our child care system. It turns out that the ideas included in that report were not pipe dreams, and many states have put them into action.
From a new nation-leading child tax credit that will cut child poverty by a third, to $1.3 billion for expansion of mixed-delivery child care, to continuous medicaid coverage for children to age 6, to a long list of other wins for young children and their families, there were almost too many advancements to count in the 2023 legislative session. The secret to all these wins? A long-standing “of coalition of coalitions” in the state the centers communication, equity, cooperation, and authentic power sharing.
Zero to Five Montana is improving early education by helping to protect the languages of the state’s 12 Native American tribes. It’s an effort to enrich children, support early educators, and draw on the experience and expertise of the larger community. Young children experience a better understanding of their own cultural identity when they can learn their tribal language, and this cultural knowledge helps heal some aspects of generational trauma that many indigenous families live with.
In this webinar, the Alliance and RH Impact (formerly the National Birth Equity Collaborative) dive into the issue of maternal mental health and explore how states and communities can provide stronger and more equitable support to expecting and new parents.
The perinatal workforce plays an indispensable role in ensuring the well-being and survival of pregnant people and their babies throughout pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum. However, systemic issues and social disparities continue to persist, leaving many birthing people, particularly Black and Indigenous communities, without access to the quality maternal health care they deserve. The Alliance and co-host Black Mamas Matter Alliance will explore strategies to better equip, support and advance the Black maternal, reproductive, and perinatal workforce.
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© 2024 Alliance for Early Success
The Alliance for Early Success does not endorse or advocate for specific legislation or candidates.
