My time serving on the Early Childhood Association of Oklahoma (ECAO) board, Oklahoma's National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) was when I first began to learn the value of advocacy and I attended the NAEYC Public Policy Institute that is when I became motivated to advocate for very young children.
It is critical when conducting advocacy efforts to get people involved at both the grassroots level and the greater area because you serve different purposes in the effort. The people at the grassroots level serve to get people excited and they are equipped to tell their story with passion. At the macro level you have people that are keeping the grassroots level people informed with action alerts and details of the movement.
Anyone can be a community leader on early childhood issues if you take the time to become educated about the issues. In our reading this week a lawyer became an early childhood advocate. My advocacy mentor Adele Robinson is a lawyer, but now serves full time as a public policy expert for NAEYC.
The key to be a state leader on early childhood issues is knowledge and information. The information is available, but sometimes not readily available so you have to be willing to do research, understand the landscape of your state, understand the political will and if you do these things you will become a state leader in early childhood issues.
Action alerts and information about the legislative process are strategies that every effective early childhood advocate implement to stay abreast of the hot issues. Tracking and timing are critical because you have to act when the time is right to help secure the votes or inform the public of the need to contact before the vote.
The best way to become a state advocacy leader is to join up with an active association so that you have support and can use the organization to grow as an advocate into a leadership role. For example, in Oklahoma joining ECAO, Oklahoma Institute for Child Advocacy (OICA), Smart Start Oklahoma, or Oklahoma Child Care Resource and Referral Association are all organizations that are active in advocacy efforts at the state and federal level. There are many ways of developing leadership within these organizations to become know as a state early childhood advocate.
I completely agree that state leaders have to have the accurate knowledge and information. This is essential in order to make the best decisions and create the most effective policies. Good Post!
ReplyDeleteAfter reading your post I am now going to search for an active association in my area. Hopefully I will find an organization that I will feel comfortable testing out my advocacy "wings". Great post!
ReplyDeleteHey Jill,
ReplyDeleteI really appreciated your post. It was very informative and gave me some ideas of things I can do. Your experience in the field is so helpful to me. Please keep sharing! My experience as a classroom teacher has afforded me different opportunities and knowledge. Advocacy on the larger scale is new to me. Thanks for sharing.
:)Jen
NAEYC is truly a great organization; most of the daycares in my area are part of this organization. Your post was very informative. The daycares must have at 30 hours of training to receive a star rating.
ReplyDeleteEducation is definitely the key with advocating for others. Continuing to educate ourselves on the issues is vital to our advocacy success. People will listen when we know what we are talking about.
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