Challenge:
In June of 2008, United Way for Southeastern Michigan (UWSEM) launched the Early Learning Communities (ELC) project, an initiative to improve the quality of early childhood care and education in the metropolitan Detroit area. To date, ELC’s central strategy has been to identify and provide relevant training to informal and licensed early childcare providers, parents, and friends and family members who care for young children. To accomplish this, the ELC project has funded ten training “Hubs,” which are embedded in existing community organizations and agencies throughout southeastern Michigan. In the ELC project’s first year, the Hubs’ successes in recruiting childcare providers and engaging them in their training programs were promising but not consistent.
Solution:
The ELC project hired grassroots solutions to conduct a grassroots organizing workshop for Hub leaders in the spring of 2010 with a focus on tactics for targeting, recruiting and building relationships with childcare providers that would draw them into ELC’s training curriculum. grassroots solutions conducted a brief program strategy assessment as a predicate to developing this highly customized two-day workshop, and a related grassroots organizing handbook.
Following the workshop, the ELC team requested that grassroots solutions provide hands-on assistance to one of the ELC Hubs, located in Pontiac, to help them think about how to apply some of the best practices learned during the workshop to their challenges in organizing child care providers. Specifically, grassroots solutions worked closely with the Hub to develop a detailed provider recruitment and engagement plan that fit their specific community context and maximized their resources.
Results:
- 60 ELC Hub and program staff participated in a two-day interactive training that introduced them to the basics of grassroots recruitment and engagement and helped raise their level of understanding and ownership of these strategies and tactics.
- One ELC Hub -- Oakland Family Services in Pontiac, Michigan – now has a detailed organizing plan, including a grassroots activities calendar and staffing plan that will provide a road map for increased recruitment and retention of childcare providers.
- With its Hub partners, the ELC staff will be able to assess the rollout of Oakland Family Services’ organizing plan as a pilot for other Hubs’ efforts. Work is underway to adapt the Oakland Family Services plan into a template which, with some additional one-on-one technical assistance, may serve as a model for customized planning for other Hubs.