Happy April! And welcome to our next focus for the next quarter of 2022 – Equity!
We will spend the next three months talking about how we as early childhood professionals can:
1⃣ Promote equal opportunity for all – regardless of appearance, beliefs, or background (for example, social group, city, or culture)
2⃣ Encourage staff, children, and families to embrace their identities, preferences, and complexities
3⃣ Shift thinking, close gaps, change practice, remove policies and systems that create barriers, and create policies and procedures that are inclusive
Here is a message from our President, Shaneil ‘PJ’ Yarbrough:
Transcript: Hello AECA members and friends! I’m excited to share a little bit more about our 2022 campaign, BeYOUtiful! In the first three months, we talked about Empathy – my few takeaways are we should do our best to understand what others are going through, then value their feelings and use all of that knowledge to connect to them the best that we can. As we move into these next three months, April through June, we’ll be focusing on our second ‘e’, Equity. Equity is promoting the equal opportunity for all people. We have to make sure that everyone has a chance regardless of their appearance, their beliefs or even their background. It shouldn’t matter their social group, city or their culture. All staff, children and families in the early childhood field should be encouraged to embrace their identities, their preferences and their complexities. Let’s use this time to shift our thinking, close those gaps and even change practices, policies and systems that might be creating barriers. It’s our goal to make sure we have an inclusive environment where everyone can walk away with one of my favorite quotes in mind – Mr Rogers used to always say, “I like you, just the way you are.”. Thank you in advance for every thing you will do, striving for equity in our BeYOUtiful campaign.
You can see our full 2022 BeYoutiful campaign here.
If you are a member of AECA, you will find the April issue of the AECA Update in your email inbox. You can also find this document inside the membership site via our website here. If you are not a member or need to renew your membership, you can do so via the link above.
If you have any questions about membership please do not hesitate to ask by sending an email to paul@arkansasearlychildhood.org We would love to hear your feedback! Email communications@arkansasearlychildhood.org for any comments, questions or inquiries to be featured in future editions.
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