Every month since February, a group of twelve Child Care Aware staff volunteers from all program areas have been meeting together as Access Ambassadors. Our goal? To create a system where everyone is welcomed, respected, supported, and valued. We also want our programs to reflect our values of diversity, equity and inclusion. We carefully discuss each activity of our system, looking for ways to improve our service delivery, staff training, and program planning.

In a few short months, this high-energy group has created and shared regional diversity maps, supported a process to reduce costs for bilingual/bicultural trainers to participate in Training of Trainers, shared best practices about offering trainings in other languages, developed a series of webinars on cultural diversity, revisited multicultural items acceptable for grants, and made recommendations for future training for the Child Care Aware system.

This work ensures that our system puts equity and diversity at the heart of what we do and creates tools to support this important work. As Minnesota becomes more diverse, our child care workforce and programs must respond. The Access Ambassadors are leading this response within the Child Care Aware system.

Please reach out if you have more ideas – we would love to hear them!