In partnership with the Alliance for Early Success, ZERO TO THREE (ZTT) launched a collaboration community in January 2025 to support Alliance state grantees in elevating family voice and cultivating their leadership in advocacy and policy. A key focus of the community is exploring strategies to shift organizational culture and systems in ways that support meaningful partnership with families from the beginning of policy agenda development through the policy implementation process.
The community kicked-off with an in-person meeting in Savannah, Georgia and will be followed by bi-monthly virtual meetings beginning in February. The ZERO TO THREE facilitation team includes two parent advocates from ZTT’s Strolling Thunder Family Advocacy Network.
The content and structure of the community will be co-designed with state advocacy participants. It is designed to provide a space for state advocates to reflect together on their efforts to authentically engage families and support them to lead and influence policy change. Community members will bring challenges they want to think through together, share strategies that they’re finding effective, and discuss how to continue supporting families to be leaders in the policymaking process.
January’s kickoff included sessions titled:
- From Transactional to Transformational: Building Authentic Relationships with Families – Participants learned from ZTT Strolling Thunder family leaders about what helped them to build their advocacy expertise and leadership.
- Organizational Culture Supporting Family Engagement – A panel from Zero to Five Montana talked about how they work together to make family engagement a core part of all they do. Participants learned where they are on the family engagement path, some of their successes, how they’ve stumbled, and what more they want to do.
- Helping Now and Holding Hope for the Future – Family advocacy is a long game. Participants discussed how to engage families, support them deal with the ups and downs of policy change, and encourage them to hold out hope for a better future for their children and themselves.
In addition to large group activities, one afternoon was spent in small group table topic discussions. Community participants chose from the following subjects and rotated based on interests.
- Beyond Transactional Relationships: Building Trust with Families
- Sustaining Engagement: Keeping Families Involved Over Time
- Funding and Compensation: Fair Practices for Family Leaders
- Amplifying Lived Experiences: Ethical and Effective Storytelling
- Trauma-Informed Approaches in Family Advocacy
Community members have identified several areas they want to focus on, including:
- How to measure impact
- Concrete family engagement and leadership development strategies and processes
- Effective long-term parent engagement with limited organizational capacity
The twelve states participating in the CoP are Alaska, California, Georgia, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas, and Wisconsin.
