My Own Capacity

         The issues that impact children and their families in the field of early childhood education that I am most passionate about are early intervention, developmental issues, and malnutrition. In order to be a great advocate for these issues are to work together as a team, networking with different people to get your voices and opinions across, and to persevere and never give up on your goals of solving your issues. In order for me to become a more effective advocate is to be a better communicator because of me being an introverted person. That is my biggest problem today and it is what is most effective of being an advocate. If I don’t communicate and network with other people in the community and with my advocacy team then I would not be able to progress in accomplish our goals. So I want to be able to grow in being more open to communication and to practice public speaking skills to be a better advocate.

My Role as an Advocate

         My motivation in advocating for very young children is my background story of my very own childhood. I was born premature but I grew up to become a healthy young lady ready to take on the world. I wanted to be an encouragement to other families out there who are going through the same issue as my parents with premature children even despite having developmental issues and delays as well. I believe that at the macro level of advocacy, you can reach so many people at the local level and get together to think of great solutions. That way once you put all of your ideas together then you can upgrade those ideas and concerns to those at the national level where all the policy takes place. To be a community leader in childhood issues you have to be willing to have a passion and to be able to work with all sorts of people. You also have to be consistent in your work and never back down. Funding and networking is so important when it comes to the resources in state leadership. Networking helps to keep in touch with programs all across the state. In order to mobilize people, I focus on the issues going on in early childhood today. We have a few newsletters that come in at work every now and then and I read them to get the heads up. The advice I would give to someone interested in leadership role and advocating for young children and families are to have a lot of passion, drive, and determination to do all you can for them. Being a teacher has its challenges but I would encourage those interested to keep their head up and keep the motivation to lend a hand for children and families. 



                                                                        Reference
                                                                             
                   Zero to Three Policy Center. (2008). Advocacy strategies to improve outcomes for very                                      young children: Interviews with leaders at the state and community levels. Retrieved from
                        http://main.zerotothree.org/site/DocServer/AdvocacyLeaders_final.pdf?docID=1882 

Personal Advocacy

            The person that I admire their personal acts of advocacy is my one of my professors from ECSU. I admire her because of her ability to stand up for what she believes in and her ability to stand strong for our school. The school I attended as an undergrad is historically black college. For years, there have been people who have tried to take down our school and to get rid of it. The person that I admire Dr. Coulson-Clark is one of my Political Science professors and has had much experience in the political world. To keep our school afloat, she has done much grant writing , is the head of the Global Leadership Academy, and is now apart of several other committees at my alumni school. Dr. CC has worked in D.C at the Department of State and because of her background and experience, she is able to better provide support for our school. Dr. CC has done so much as a professor, friend, and colleague for many people as well as myself. She was hard on me as a student but I knew deep down she wanted me to excel in life and live to be a success! Til this day, my school is standing thanks to her.