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To Our Beloved Community,
As we enter an already tumultuous 2026, I find myself reflecting on a vision that has long guided movements for justice: the idea of a society rooted in dignity, compassion, and mutual respect, where our shared humanity binds us to one another. This vision, often described as the Beloved Community, is not abstract; it is a daily practice. It shapes how we respond in moments of crisis, how we invest in communities, and how we at the Foundation for Child Development choose to stand alongside those working to strengthen the connections between community, research, and policy to advance social justice for children.
Looking back on 2025
The year 2025 tested this vision profoundly. It opened with a wave of executive actions intended to instill fear and destabilize immigrant families and the organizations and people that support them. An early Executive Order rescinded a protected-areas policy that had prohibited ICE raids in childcare centers, schools, houses of worship, and hospitals, and left children afraid to leave their homes, their schoolmates terrified and confused about who would disappear, and childcare centers and schools managing attendance and enrollment declines. By the Summer, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” had made ICE the highest-funded law enforcement agency in the country with an $85 billion budget—a policy action that has ramped up kidnappings, killings, separation of families, and community-wide trauma.
Higher education and research institutions were thrown into crisis as federal agencies canceled or froze over 7,800 research grants, totaling more than $1 billion. Over 300,000 civil servants left or were removed from the federal workforce, disrupting critical work in health, science, environment, justice, and child well-being. Funding cuts to education, justice, and community programs, coupled with rising harassment and doxxing of nonprofits, educators, and researchers, revealed how fragile our democracy can be when freedom of speech is denied, and lawlessness runs rampant.
Yet even amid these destabilizing actions, we witnessed courage and resolve among our grantees, partners, and many others across the country. In 2025, FCD joined them in meeting this moment by recommitting to our core principles in championing social justice for young children. We defined our core priorities through a Strategic Framework grounded in emergent learning, an approach that recognizes the complexity of our environment and the need to nimbly adapt to changing conditions. Our board approved a plan to increase our grantmaking over the next three years, expanding our ability to support community-driven, research-informed policy and advocacy work for children marginalized by racism, xenophobia, and economic inequality. These steps reflect a deliberate choice to engage directly in the fight for a fair and just multiracial democracy that supports all children.
We also deepened collaboration across the field, working to bridge divides between research, social movements, and philanthropy so that we forge a more robust collective response than any of us could achieve on our own. We launched the SPARK (Stories of Power, Agency, Resilience, and Kinship) blog series to uplift examples of courage as people across sectors stood with children of immigrants amid unlawful and dehumanizing attacks. We invested in partnerships between movement groups, researchers, and philanthropy to protect the rights and well-being of children of immigrants and their families. We supported researchers in contributing to strategic litigation efforts to challenge unlawful federal actions regarding Head Start, unaccompanied children, and birthright citizenship. In the final weeks of the year, alongside philanthropic colleagues, we submitted a public comment in response to the Department of Homeland Security’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to express our opposition to changes regarding "public charge,” which would create additional uncertainty and fear among immigrant families and further harm children’s health, education, and development.
Early 2026
The first month of 2026 has already reminded us how closely tragedy and hope coexist in the battle between authoritarian forces and a multiracial democracy. In Minneapolis alone, ICE and Border Patrol have killed two people and, after detaining a 5-year-old boy, attempted to use him as “bait” to lure his family members from their home. These and other incursions were met by the tremendous solidarity response from Minnesotans—from community organizers to elected officials, from business owners to labor unions, from students to educators, from neighbors to faith leaders—marching side by side in peaceful protest, protecting each other’s safety, providing food and assistance to those who cannot leave their homes, and showing all of us what Beloved Community looks like.
In 2026, we are also witnessing the continued scapegoating of immigrant communities to advance an authoritarian agenda that seeks to further divide our country. Federal threats to withhold childcare funding from five states demonstrate a willingness to demonize immigrants in order to destabilize the childcare infrastructure that allows children, families, and communities to thrive.
Yet even in the face of fear and uncertainty, we continue to see what becomes possible when people choose one another. In New York, Governor Hochul and Mayor Mamdani are partnering to expand universal childcare, affirming that early learning is not a privilege but a shared public responsibility. At the federal level, a nationwide injunction protecting Head Start preserved a vital lifeline for children from low-income families—a reminder that justice is not abstract, but built through courage, evidence, and collective action. These wins were made possible not only by lawyers but by the work of childcare organizers and state Head Start Associations, who bravely stepped forward as plaintiffs in the legal fight.
Moving Forward Together
As we move through 2026, FCD reaffirms its commitment to a vision of community where all children are treasured, all families are treated with dignity, and policies are designed to serve rather than exclude. Guided by the vision of a Beloved Community, we will continue to work in solidarity across communities and sectors, strengthen the connection between research and community needs, and invest in movements that uplift communities—building a future grounded in opportunity, justice, and belonging for all children.
In strength and solidarity,
Vivian Tseng
President & CEO, Foundation for Child Development
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