Mississippi Early Learning Alliance

The Leading from Strength Empowerment Network is a one-year professional development program for 15-25 childcare directors and owners. It is designed to promote the professional advancement of women of color working in early care and education. Members of each Leading from Strength cohort engage in a series of learning experiences over the course of one year. These experiences are designed to honor and elevate members' wisdom and lived experiences, foster collaboration among women across disciplines, build critical business skills, and provide professional leadership training.

 Leading from Strength cultivates a space for women to share their experiences, receive mentorship, and work in collaboration – not competition – with one another. Sessions and mentorship activities encourage leadership reflection and help members decolonize their minds.

Members will also learn tangible skills like strategic planning, marketing, and budgeting. We will assist cohort members in making powerful professional connections: members will build relationships with bankers and potential funders, and will practice advocacy skills directly with legislators. During and after their participation, members will have access to an online shared services platform with resources to help childcare professionals reduce costs, streamline processes, and improve quality. 

Cohorts are intended to build upon one another to form a powerful and well-connected professional network. Our first cohort consists of women at all levels of the early care and education sector. Our next cohort will recruit only childcare center owners and directors. 

High-quality childcare programs require providers with expertise in many areas: child development, early literacy, health and safety, customer service, business operations, and more. Childcare providers do critical work supporting working parents and young learners, but that work is frequently under-compensated, especially when providers are women of color. In 2015, more than 1 in 6 female childcare workers lived below the poverty line. Black and Latina childcare workers with children of their own were more than twice as likely to live below the poverty line. According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, providers reported that racial and gender bias posed additional challenges within their local business community, and noted that they felt less supported than other businesses due to their race. 

The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated existing challenges for childcare providers. MELA conducted focus groups with providers and found that during the height of COVID-19, many centers had to reduce their hours or temporarily close, which created financial hardship. Maintaining health and safety within centers was difficult, as was retaining staff. 

We know that women of color are the cornerstone of early care and education. Nationally, the field is composed mainly of women, 40% of whom are people of color. Further, the perspectives and life experiences of women of color are critical to field. Research shows that children benefit from caregivers who share their ethnicity – and 51% of children in Mississippi are children of color. Mississippi’s childcare professionals provide an essential service while shouldering the burdens of systemic racism and sexism.

We cannot remove all the barriers that systemic racism and sexism have built to prevent women of color from thriving as small business owners. However, Leading from Strength exists to begin removing some of those barriers for women of color who work in childcare as a director or an educator, while helping members overcome others. For example, the Brookings Institution reports that women of color are more likely to say that they want to advance professionally than their white women counterparts, but are less likely to find mentors to help them do so. This program will help fill that gap in the field of early care and education by connecting women of color who are childcare providers to mentors in the business and education communities.  

Furthermore, Leading from Strength will help members navigate the systems and institutions that are critical to their success. Members will increase their capacity to secure funding and work effectively with banks and other financial institutions. They will learn and develop mechanisms to influence policy. Ultimately, we hope to see multiple cohorts working together to reshape the early care and education landscape into a more equitable and economically sustainable space for women of color.

The Leading From Strength program targets women of color who own or work in childcare businesses. Childcare center directors in Mississippi make an average of $19.78 an hour, and childcare workers make an average of 8.94 according to The Center for the Study of Childcare Employment. Because women of color make up a large proportion of early care and education providers, this industry presents a unique opportunity to support and elevate women of color as business leaders. However, women of color frequently do not receive the respect, trust, and professional opportunities their qualifications and expertise demand. For example, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, Black childcare providers earn an average of $0.78 less per hour than their white counterparts, even when controlling for education.
 Primarily our cohorts are made up of African American women who have educational attainment of a BA or less. The program is designed and led by an African American woman who has worked as a childcare provider, and who has deep connections with the community of current childcare providers in our state. In this way, the program is designed with their needs, aspirations, and strengths in mind. Also, the members of each cohort have opportunities to weigh in on the agendas for gatherings, and also receive one-on-one coaching from leadership coach who also identifies as a woman of color. In this way, the program is structured to develop specific strengths for each individual business owner.

When we have the results of our first and second cohort's leadership trajectories, we hope to expand our work and partner with other early childhood and childcare organizations to launch more Leading from Strength Cohorts in other states. But currently, our program serves the entire state of Mississippi.

Mississippi Early Learning Alliance's mission is focused on ensuring that young children in our state thrive, and we have a goal of developing a state-of-the-art childcare system in Mississippi by 2030. This work cannot be done by a single organization, nor can it be reached without having childcare providers deeply engaged in the process and supported as leaders in the work. Therefore, we've realized the importance of sustaining private childcare providers, who play critical roles in communities by providing foundational education and skills development for children, while supporting working parents. The unique position that child care providers occupy as both
small business operators and as an essential social service means that Leading From Strength is a program directly aligned to our mission.

 MELA believes that in order to ensure that young children in Mississippi thrive, we must have a high quality, accessible, affordable childcare system. Currently our system perpetuates inequality. It is inequitable, cannot be afforded, and is complicated for families and providers to navigate. To reach our vision, we must consciously design liberating systems while also dismantling inequalities. We will do this by elevating the voices of parents, caregivers, community leaders, and direct service providers by intentionally seeking their input and recognizing it as expertise at every step the design process. We will foster authentic relationships with providers and families and co-design solutions with them that address their concerns, issues, and ideas. We will build on the existing skills and strengths of childcare providers and families, ensuring that the new system is equitable and works in ways that benefit the users.

Currently we serve 10 small businesses, and we will expand to 25 in one year, and 125 in 5 years.

The Mississippi Early Learning Alliance serves the childcare community in Mississippi. Leading From Strength focuses on childcare providers who own small businesses, as well as other leaders from nonprofits and agencies who support childcare and early education. The stakeholders of the childcare community include business owners who rely on childcare to help their employees get to work, and parents who require childcare in order to get and keep jobs. 

The Leading From Strength cohort includes skill building, personal reflection, and relationship building development that is rooted in our Mississippi context. They take place in different regions of our state, and offer opportunities to network with many business and childcare leaders who share the backgrounds of our cohort members. The sessions are also designed by African American women for other women of color, and provide opportunities to understand, connect, and build relationships with one another so that the cohort becomes a trusting community of support that members can reach out to in times of need. To ensure that we engaging our community we co-construct the outcomes of each cohort at the first meeting. This ensures that each Leading From Strength Cohort addresses the critical components that are most important to members so that we see improved outcomes and authentic engagement.

The Leading From Strength program agenda is co-design and co-created each year by the members of each cohort, which builds trust. Also, April May has been a childcare provider and has a long history of personal connections with childcare providers around the state. She is an active member with early childhood associations. She has served on the board for the MS Early Childhood Association, and was nominated President-Elect for the MS Early Childhood Association, so she is well known by many childcare providers. Because she is leading the program, childcare providers trust that she will be supportive and that the program will be beneficial to them. MELA also is the sponsor and host of the statewide childcare shared services site, a one-stop shop of resources and discounts for childcare providers. This has led to trust and frequent communication between our team and our potential cohort members who own childcare businesses.

• Within 1 year of becoming a program alumni, 3/4 will report stronger marketing, human resources, or strategic planning skills.
  

•  At the end of the program, members of the circle will articulate a close personal and professional connection with one another and feel supported and affirmed in their leadership. They will report reaching out to someone they met through the program for professional support.
  

• Within one year of becoming a program alumni, ½ will report that they have an increased professional network portfolio from diverse backgrounds.

The team at MELA is uniquely qualified to serve as the engine behind this collective work. Deep roots in Mississippi give us a nuanced understanding of the culture, history, and people that shaped education and childcare thus far. We pair that with technical and academic expertise to shape Mississippi's future. Our partners know they can come to us when they need resources, advice, or a helping hand.

Our partners trust us in our capacity as a curated information hub: we help fill systemic communication gaps with important, timely messages and updates to childcare providers and other early childhood professionals. 

We have also worked with partners to successfully advocate for the appropriation of $3.9 million to help childcare providers purchase PPE and sanitation supplies in 2020, so childcare providers know that we have their best interests at heart and are working to support them in many ways.

We have also registered over 1,400 members on our shared services website for childcare providers, MSEarlyLearningResources.org which gives us a direct line of communication to them.

Lastly, we have convened a broad array of early childhood professionals and providers at five major early childhood-focused events, with each event averaging over 100 attendees. 

Leading From Strength is an innovative solution to a major issue in our workforce. Mentorship and relationships are a key aspect of our program, so we  believe that our own team would benefit from mentorship from MIT Solve and Truist Foundation connections. Also, it would be very beneficial to have high quality support as we refine our business model and plan for growth. Lastly, we want to ensure that our solution is having a positive impact on the lives of cohort members, but we need support developing our full monitoring and evaluation plan.

We would like to partner with businesses and corporations who have expressed an issue keeping and retaining staff, especially if their staff are parents or care givers of young children. We believe that our connections with childcare owners and directors can help them provide access to childcare. This can have can have a benefit for both parties.