Today, organizations across the country—including many of you!—are rallying on this “Day of Action” to show federal policymakers that support for early learning is widespread and strong. We hope you’ll join us in echoing that rallying cry: Grow America Stronger through quality early childhood education.
FFYF, alongside other organizations participating in the Strong Start for Children coalition, launched this new website to serve as our collective call to action as we demonstrate broad-based support and create a sense of urgency so that Congress takes action this summer. We encourage you to use this website, link to it, and join us as a partner.
We also hope you’ll sign the Grow America Stronger petition, which sends a letter directly to your member of Congress, and share the petition with your networks. To share the petition “widget” and include it on your website, simply select “get widget” from the petition site. Please share the www.GrowAmericaStronger.org website on your Facebook and Twitter and use #GrowAmericaStonger as you encourage people to sign the petition. We’re hoping for a strong show of force for the stronger academic, economic, health, and social out comes that we all know early learning provides. Let’s make a big splash on this big day.
But that’s not all! FFYF’s efforts to make the case for investing in early learning have included infographics explaining how proposed plans would work and how they yield results. Today, a team of top-notch graphic designers are coming together for FFYF’s first-ever “design-a-thon,” an all-day endeavor to create even more tools we can all use to make our case. We’re thrilled that so much creative energy is being brought to bear, and we can’t wait to share the fruits of their labor. Stay tuned.
And, thanks to Department of Education, you have some new data to aid the cause. Yesterday, they released state-by-state reports detailing how expanding high-quality early education opportunities for children birth to age five would directly benefit our nation’s children. The data reveal just how many eligible children stand to benefit from expanding home visiting, improving the quality of infant and toddler child care, and providing high-quality preschool opportunities—and just how important it is to Grow America Stronger.