Focus Area: Advocacy in Early Childhood

Grant Amount: $10,000

Located in Minneapolis. Opened in 1984, PSP is the largest and most comprehensive, family-focused homeless shelter in Minnesota with 62% of PSP’s guests being children. It provides shelter and multiple support services to move families experiencing homelessness toward self-sufficiency. It has also provided key advocacy support for the well-being of families and children experiencing homelessness, serving on their behalf on numerous coalitions, and helping to train parents to tell their stories in the service of advocacy. Critical to this is PSP’s focus on racial equity and belief that Black, Indigenous, and parents of color are the most important voice in advocacy around their issues.

Grant supports PSP’s issue and administrative advocacy efforts to increase access to quality early education opportunities for homeless families, including deepening engagement from a wholistic trauma-informed lens with those families. PSP does this work in partnership with KIDS CAN’T WAIT, Voices and Choices for Children, the Children’s Defense Fund early childhood advocacy table, and Think Small. Building on the work of its guest advisory council, parent engagement program, and voter engagement team, PSP is working to develop an authentic engagement model to build power with its families to change systems.