Focus Area: Advocacy in Early Childhood

Grant Amount: $10,000

Based in St. Paul, serves statewide. Established in 1992 to raise the standards in care for children and child care providers, Child Care Aware provides technical assistance to 14 childcare resource and referral agencies around Minnesota, collects data regarding the supply and demand for childcare, and creates and manages statewide projects. It has been integral in the piloting and expansion of Parent Aware, the state’s quality improvement framework for early care and education programs.

Grant supports advocacy efforts that support the goals of the Transforming Minnesota’s Early Childhood Workforce project, which is the result of many years’ work by a broad group of stakeholders to address the issue of a shrinking and inadequately trained early childhood workforce that has not included enough opportunities to train providers of color. The plan is to continue 2022’s efforts into 2023 to ask for continued investment to support the early childhood workforce. The leaders of the TMEC Workforce have played a key role in the legislative response to helping support the childcare industry during the Covid-19 crisis and were instrumental in helping obtain CARES funding to support providers serving essential workers.