Hello Friends,

Stories have become a common feature in both advocacy and informing policy making decisions. But we have to ask ourselves: whose stories are we talking about? Because in reality, bringing the voices of those furthest from opportunity continues to be difficult. Authentically engaging underserved communities is still fraught with challenges.

Most importantly, we don’t want these stories only to circulate anecdotally. It is critical to have them documented, so they become a resource to understand our complex reality.

At Kids Forward, we try to be creative in collecting and sharing stories from diverse voices.

In the HearUs podcast series a group of young people discuss their experiences within the juvenile justice and child welfare systems in Wisconsin. Participants were asked their recommendations for the system if they were in charge. Get to know the youth and ask why were one of many resounding themes shared.

Family Child Care and Professionalization in ECE topics are covered in our conversations with family child care providers. Nearly half of the early care and education workforce is family child care providers. But Corrine stressed her feelings of being alone and unsupported by the system. COVID has exacerbated the broken child care system and made its importance far more obvious. As Abby noted about the newfound visibility of this long under-valued system, ”There is nothing more visible than this.” Wisconsin’s Child Care Champions also covers more perspectives about the importance of child care.

These are just a few examples of the stories available on our newly launched Multimedia section. It is essentially a virtual library, to get ourselves a bit more familiar with our collective reality.

Please peruse the section. We’ll also share them periodically on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Don’t be surprised to find how common these stories are among us.

Enjoy!

Kids Forward