As part of our celebration of this year’s Black Maternal Health Week (April 11-17), the Alliance is spotlighting a few of the maternal health organizations it has met as part of the Power Equity Fund, a new early childhood policy advocacy fund that is distributing the Alliance’s $10-million McKenzie Scott grant. Often not widely known or resourced, these organizations are making an impact by centering the agency of the communities they serve.
The Beloved Early Education and Care Collective (BEE Collective) works in the southern part of South Carolina, outside of Charleston, and is focused on building on the assets of the pregnant people, children, and caregivers who are furthest from opportunity—work that creates the kind of deep community that heals itself and builds increasing power.
The collective was formed in 2018 to increase the social-emotional development outcomes of children birth to 6. “It was clear there was a problem,” says Adrienne Troy-Frazier, one of the organization’s founders. “Expulsions from child care programs and preschool programs were disproportionately Black boys and children with disabilities.” Troy-Frazier has deep experience in early education administration and could clearly see the systems failing these children, so she set out to collect the data and hold community forums to spotlight the issue. Today, BEE Collective continues to compile reports and hold town halls as part of its Kicked Out initiative.
In the process of addressing suspensions and expulsions, it became clear that the systems failing the area’s young children were not just in the early education system—they extended into all aspects of their lives. “There was no hospital in Berkley County at the time,” she says. “There was nowhere for these children and their mothers to access care.”
So, in addition to the organization’s work to illuminate and eliminate implicit bias in early care and education, BEE Collective quickly expanded into birth equity. “We are building family resilience from the beginning,” she says, “with free doula services, access to free perinatal supplies, free ready to eat nutritious meals, and birth worker support and training—but also with community healing and mutual aid… creating communities that can heal each other and empower each other to control narratives around birthing, breastfeeding, and mothering.”
Today the mission of the BEE Collective is to ensure that every child enters kindergarten socially and emotionally ready to learn, that every pregnant person, parent, and early educator has positive well-being and the tools to navigate maternal health and early care systems, that families are resilient, and that the community reduces mental health stigma for all ages.
Asked about the theme for this year’s Black Maternal Health Week, “Healing Legacies: Strengthening Black Maternal Health Through Collective Action and Advocacy,” Troy-Frazier says there is a real connection between healing and advocacy. The organization and its collective are advocating for childcare workforce tax credit legislation; a tax credit for diapers, formula and diapers; and Medicaid reimbursement for doula services. And she recently took a group of mothers of neurodiverse children to the capitol to talk to policymakers about suspensions and expulsions.
While this work can be slow and frustrating, Troy-Frazier says, advocacy can be healing because it builds agency and resilience.
“This was the first time for a lot of these moms to do this, to go to the capitol and advocate for their families and communities.”
“That’s power. That’s voice. That’s a win to celebrate.”
