Inaugural Cohort

Healing Hannah’s Heart: City of Mobile Home Child Care Re-Zoning

The purpose of our project is to educate the City of Mobile Officials and families about the existence of high-quality Family Child Care Educator Programs in our communities. Our goal is build an alliance with the City of Mobile Zoning/Use Variance Department that will open the avenue for family child care educator programs to increase the number of children in our programs from 5 to 10 children within the city limits of Mobile, AL.

The Family Child Care Providers Podcast

The Family Child Care Providers Podcast empowers Family Child Care Educators to feel apart of the early education field, provide resources and ways to advocate for themselves and their communities. This will be accomplished through monthly podcast interviews that highlight those within the field and those who provide resources to Family Child Care Educators. Thereby creating a network throughout the country that will inspire and promote the field of Family Childcare Educators.

Holistic Community Gardening

We hope to Accomplish: Common unity of health awareness, along with positive social interactions. Hands-on insightful knowledge of the complete gardening process, detailing the projected responsibilities, and commitment involved in creating a live flourishing community garden. The community volunteers will learn about the diversity of herbs, vegetables, and fruit that grow in our climate and their benefits.

Action Plan: Create a planning committee that will consist of individuals who will provide education and assistance to the volunteers. There are several steps to creating a community garden. Education, establishing a team, and planning are vital to having a successful community garden. Once these steps are completed. The next steps in this process are funding, property, planting and upkeep.

Getting to know ‘us’… Family Child Care

It has become even more apparent during the pandemic that our local elected officials, families and potential families don’t understand the business structure that makes up a family child care program or the importance for choosing licensed, high-quality programs. We want to work on strengthening our advocacy practices and work on building relationships with our local elected officials. We would also like to create a series of short videos that target each audience – local elected officials, families currently enrolled in our programs and potential families – educating them on family child care and getting them to understand our programs more than they currently do.

Montana Family Childcare Network

The Montana Family Childcare Network (MFCN) is for Registered Family, Friend & Neighbor and Family/Group Educators. MFCN will support these educators in mentorship, advocacy, professionalism and business practice development, and promoting high quality care and education in home based childcare settings. MFCN is uniting Family Childcare Educators from across Montana for the purpose of giving the collective a place at the legislative table and a voice to be reckoned with. MFCN is achieving this through collaborations with the National Association of Family Childcare, Montana Association for the Education of Young Children, Raise Montana, Zero to Five/United Way of Montana, and other early childhood supportive organizations.

Family Child Care Association Instilling Tolerance & Hope (F.A.I.T.H.)

F.A.I.T.H. is a 501c3 established to support Family Child Care Providers in the state of New Jersey. Our goal is to set a standard where in-home childcare is the premier choice within New Jersey. We will accomplish this by mentoring the provider and developing essential business and professional skills that are needed to create lasting connections and relationships in their communities. F.A.I.T.H. is dedicated to supporting the providers through educational training webinars and networking.

Garden Boxes

Our Garden Boxes are setting up early educators for sucess. They’re giving the children a choice of food on their plates and teaching them to choose a healthy food to help reduce childhood obesity. We’re measuring the provider and the families horticulture knowledge and providing them horticulture training and field trips to Seed 4 Change urban farm which provides hands on training.

ANI – Advocating for the Need of Inclusion in Early Childcare Environments

ANI’s goal is to achieve a series of inclusive environments in which all families feel safe and supported—a place where everyone belongs.

ANI will accomplish this through an intiative of two phases, in which therapeutic supports and resources are integrated into early childcare environments, supporting whole families in an inclusive design. Phase I will include the promotion of an internal inclusive relationship with children, families, and community partners; while Phase II will expand externally to teaching early childhood professionals to develop their inclusive relationships while using the ANI design.

Bridging the Gap

Our Community Project was based on “Bridging the Gap” between Hispanic/ Latino Child Care Providers and other surrounding communities. We invited this community of Providers to network and complete CDA trainings and other professional development classes.

We had an interpreter speaking in Spanish to empower them by learning best practices within their own community. This learning bridge has built up the Hispanic Providers’ confidence level within our ECE community. It has created a lasting professional relationship and partnership within different communities.

The Family Childcare Coalition

Leading the charge, The Family Childcare Coalition is a Non-profit Co-op that is owned and operated by providers for providers. We’re seeking to build leaders who can help lead and grow advocacy projects, such as our 10,000 signatures for Worthy Wages. FC3 invites you to take a stand to tell your representative to support Worthy Wages for the workforce behind the workforce.

Austin Family Child Care Association

We are forming a family child care association in Austin, Texas that is targeting small individual family child care providers. The association will educate them on resources available to them at local, state and national levels to operate according to best practices and be deemed high quality facilities.

Growing Milton, VT Early Childhood Network

This project will be a vessel to bring the community together as one voice advocating for change. This will include early childhood educators, families, and children in the community of Milton, Vermont. This will be done by offering opportunities to Early Childhoood Educators and families on how to effectively advocate for change, which will include sharing advocacy tools and information on public policies.