Who knew a 140-character message would lead to this?  In September of last year, United Way for Southeastern Michigan (UWSEM) reached out to grassroots solutions via Twitter for help with a campaign to recruit and engage informal childcare providers in a multi-year community education program. 70% of the kids who enter kindergarten in southeastern Michigan have been cared for by family members, relatives or friends, and haven’t attended a licensed pre-K program. UWSEM created its Early Learning Communities program (ELC) to provide early childhood education trainings to these informal childcare providers to help equalize opportunities for all kids in the region so they can enter kindergarten ready to succeed.

In early April, grassroots solutions went to UWSEM’s  Detroit office to conduct a grassroots workshop on effective strategies for recruiting these childcare providers and for creating a cycle of engagement to draw them deeper into the ELC training curriculum. Forty participants from UWSEM staff and ELC community partners attended the two-day workshop.  The workshop sessions covered most of the grassroots basics, from how to build a volunteer leader program, to how to best utilize the ELC’s Ning Network.  grassroots solutions also brought in its mobile partner, Mobile Commons, to demonstrate how a text/SMS program might aide ELC’s efforts to engage targeted childcare providers moving forward.  New ideas about how to apply grassroots organizing to the program’s goals were presented, staff had a chance to share best practices among themselves, and the workshop offered an important opportunity for UWSEM and the ELC program to re-examine how far they had come and where they want to go.  grassroots solutions also designed a special grassroots handbook for UWSEM’s ELC program as a workshop takeaway.

To maximize the impact of the workshop, grassroots solutions will be providing UWSEM with three months of technical assistance and strategy advising as they and their community partners create their childcare provider recruitment and engagement plans, and begin to roll out and test some of the strategies and tactics explored in the workshop.