Greetings,

We welcome your engagement in efforts to harness and align our collective assets to advance local, regional, and state action in service of a re-imagined early childhood care and education system. 

With this newsletter we aim to educate and inform our community about the need for systems change and collectively engage in advocating for action.
“If people don’t have care, then they can’t get to work.”  We’re learning more and more about the devastating impact the pandemic has had on women’s workforce participation and about child care’s essential role in getting parents back to work. According to Bloomberg News, more than 2 million women have dropped out of the workforce since the virus hit. And more than one-third of parents — mostly women — have yet to return to jobs they lost, largely because there’s no one to look after their kids. Read more here.
US Chamber of Commerce: “Thank you, child care providers.” Recognizing the critical role that child care plays in allowing parents to go to work, the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation is thanking child care providers in this video. And the Chamber is doing more than saying thank you, it’s advocating for investment in the child care sector. In a letter to President Biden and Members of Congress, the Chamber states that, “For the millions of working parents with young children, it is critical that childcare programs be safely reopened. The Chamber supports additional funding to help reopen and support childcare providers, many of whom are small businesses themselves, and who are working hard to keep their staff and children in their care safe.” Read more here.
Participate in WECA’s virtual advocacy week.  The Wisconsin Early Childhood Association is organizing opportunities for state legislators to learn about the child care sector and hear directly from constituents. The Northeast Wisconsin session will be on Tuesday, March 2nd at 2pm. Register here.
To learn about more opportunities to advocate for child care, sign up for advocacy alerts from the Wisconsin Infant Toddler Policy Project here. 

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