We talk about centering lived experience and sharing power, but what does that look like in action? The Alliance for Early Success hosted a convening on November 13-14 in Seattle, Washington that showcased how advocates from Child Care Aware of Washington (CCA) “flipped the script” by facilitating a process that puts early childhood educators in the decision-making role.
Sharing Power and Leadership with Early Childhood Educators in ECE Advocacy gave members of the Alliance’s peer learning community on the ECE workforce a chance to hear directly from the early childhood educators, in their own words, and experience their enthusiasm for new ways of doing advocacy. Instead of policy experts advocating for them, they had the power to make decisions about the advocacy agenda and goals. Meeting participants also heard from policy advocates and agency leaders about the changes in mindsets and practices they had to make to truly share power with these educators.
To change the dynamic, CCA worked with several consultants to incorporate the principles of Liberatory Design into their work. Liberatory Design is a human-centered approach to problem solving that centers equity through established mindsets and design principles. Jennifer Jennings-Shaffer of Odyssey Strategic Consulting, Melia LeCour of Becoming Justice, and Casey Osborn-Hinman served as CCA’s partners on this journey, and facilitated the meeting.
Three key lessons came through:
- Build a foundation of trust and work to maintain it over time. Power sharing requires mutual trust, and there’s no formula or manual to building that. It requires time together, as well as one-on-one work. It means having courage to have uncomfortable conversations, naming it when trust is broken, and taking action to repair relationships.
- Share. Don’t sell. Too often, policy advocates invite those most impacted by their work to consider pre-designed policies and frameworks. Liberatory Design makes space for those with lived experience to listen and share, and create their own solutions.
- Center the voices and leadership of those with lived experience within larger coalitions. The ECE providers who took part in the Liberatory Design process now have a “seat at the table” with the Partner Roundtable, a coalition of advocacy organizations, leading the Child Care for WA campaign. In fact, they demanded four seats on the roundtable to ensure their voices were heard.
“They were prioritizing the voice of early educators. I felt included like never before.”
– Design Team Member
Sharing power and leadership with people who are most impacted is challenging, especially when advocates work in a political system that privileges traditional power structures and calls for timely action. CCA in Washington is showing that it is possible for policy advocates to navigate this tension, commit to power sharing, push for policies that are anchored in lived experience, and build more collective power to reform how we advocate.
To go deeper:
Advocates Devise a Plan to Pay Child Care Providers a Living Wage, Seattle Times
Convening Resources: Sharing Power and Leadership with Early Childhood Educators in ECE Advocacy, Alliance for Early Success
Webinar: Human Centered Design as an Equity Strategy in Early Childhood Policy and Development, Alliance for Early Success
