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Friends,

As I reflect on my first year of board service with Children’s Defense Fund, I am continually struck by the power of what happens when CDF brings the right people into the same room — young leaders, advocates, researchers, funders, and policymakers — all focused on advancing the well-being of children.

This strength was on full display at this year’s American Youth Policy Forum, powered by CDF. From education equity and mental health to immigration, youth justice, and economic mobility, CDF convened a national, cross-sector dialogue grounded in both data and lived experience. This is where policy is not only debated—but shaped.

Over the course of 2025, CDF has also advanced real policy solutions. For example, in partnership with Chapin Hall, CDF released a policy brief ([link removed]) calling for a permanently expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC) as a critical anti-poverty and child-welfare prevention strategy. The research shows that a robust, equitable CTC could dramatically reduce child poverty, ease hunger, stabilize families, and prevent child welfare system involvement.

As CDF puts it: “By strengthening income supports, childcare, health care and family-supporting wages, we can give children and families the stability they need to thrive — and prevent needless separations, trauma, and hardship.”

That’s the muscle of CDF as a national policy convener bringing together rigorous research, compelling data, lived experience, and bold advocacy. That’s how we shift systems and make lasting change for children, youth, and families.

Click the image below for highlights from this year’s AYPF.
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Your support makes this possible. It fuels the convenings, research, youth leadership pipelines, and advocacy that move ideas from conversation to concrete change.

Give today and stand with the organization building the policy pathways toward a better nation for our children.
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In community,

Dakarai I. Aarons

Board Development Committee Chair
(California)
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