CARE FELLOWSHIP
Empowering Experts in Early Care and Education
The Change Agents Ready to Emerge (CARE) Fellowship is a transformative leadership program designed to empower Minnesota’s early childhood education experts through equity-focused leadership and advocacy training. We bring together a diverse cohort of leaders to build collective knowledge, advance advocacy skills, and drive the systemic change needed to ensure a thriving, sustainable ECE community for educators and families alike.
The CARE Fellowship is a nine-month hybrid cohort experience that turns early childhood professionals into powerful change agents. Grounded in the values of professionalism, equity, and community, the fellowship provides unique professional development that elevates the expertise of those working directly in the field.
As a CARE Fellow, you will:
- Learn to use your personal story and lived experience as a compelling tool for advocacy.
- Gain a deep understanding of legislative and budget processes at the federal, state, local, and tribal levels.
- Apply an anti-racist, trauma-informed framework to dismantle barriers within the early care and education system.
- Join a robust network of over 300 alumni and partner organizations working together to shift power into the hands of ECE experts.
- Address a real-world challenge through a formalized capstone project and public-facing portfolio.
Is the CARE Fellowship right for me?
This program is an ideal fit if you are an early care and education professional who:
- Wants to move from feeling frustrated by the system to taking action to change it.
- Is looking for a brave space to explore social justice, equity, and leadership.
- Wants to build technical skills in policy and government relations.
- Is ready to collaborate with a diverse group of peers to create a more equitable future for Minnesota families and educators.
If you are ready to enhance your leadership and advocacy skills, please complete and submit the CARE Fellowship application. The 2026 application will be open through July 15. You will be notified if your application is accepted by August 3.
In 2006, the Katie Williams Child Care Advocates Ready to Emerge (CARE) Fellowship was created by Child Care WORKS in honor of longtime children's advocate Katie L. Williams.
Beginning in 2013, a collaborative of child care and early learning organizations came together to continue the legacy of the CARE Fellows: Child Care Aware of Minnesota, Minnesota Association for the Education of Young Children–Minnesota School-Age Care Alliance (MnAEYC-MnSACA), Minnesota Child Care Association (MCCA), and Think Small.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2019-2020 cohort met virtually for the last half of the Fellowship, and there was no cohort for 2020-2021. In 2021, Child Care Aware of Minnesota received a multi-year grant from the Hopkins Early Learning Center to support the fellowship. Hopkins Early Learning Center (HELC) had to cease operation at the end of 2020. However, through the leadership of its Executive Director and former CARE fellow Jamie Bonczyk, a portion of its assets have been donated to sustain and expand the CARE Fellowship.
Nearly 300 individuals from throughout Minnesota have graduated from the CARE Fellowship since 2006.
Paula Landis
"I advocate for ECE Teacher education, wages, and professional support, mental and emotional health. CARE reinforced in me the value of my voice and experience. My confidence grew as a result and not a day has gone by where I don’t have gratitude for the learning experience. Through the CARE Fellowship, I learned that it is entirely possible to fix our systems.
The CARE Fellowship community makes me feel like I am where I always wanted to be."
Roz Zuest
"Being a Fellow opened my eyes to a wider range of professional experiences and opportunities. It felt like a call to action rooted in the ethical responsibilities I hold to the larger field of early care and education. The Fellowship not only gave me permission to take up just causes, but it removed all the excuses that I had viewed as barriers. When you know better, you do better, and the CARE Fellowship had taught me so much that I could no longer stand by as a “problem admirer”; I had to become part of the solution."
Jamie Bonczyk
"I have been an advocate for children, especially those with disabilities and limitations since I was 10 … Learning to tell my stories has been greatly influential. I have used the skills to provide written and verbal testimony, author articles, and be interviewed by journalists and podcast hosts.
In 2020, I received the Provider Advocacy Award from the Start Early Funders Coalition for my continued efforts to draw attention to the needs of our field."
Mike Huber
The CARE community is a great way to find allies when you are working on an issue. You have experts to bounce around ideas as you get started on a new action. Just as often, I will discuss an issue I find important, such as Anti-Bias Curriculum, and quickly find out that most of the people joining the conversation are also CARE Fellows.
Jamesetta Diggs
"When I joined the CARE Fellowship, I had just started a new role as a home visitor ... Since then, I started an early childhood consulting business as a trainer and content developer, worked as a community organizer advocating for families from West African immigrant communities, and I now work for Child Care Aware of Minnesota as the Professional Development Systems Coordinator. These shifts came as a result of my CARE Fellowship project. I engaged with families from the West African immigrant communities and learned how the transition into early care and learning programs and services can be challenging for immigrant families.
During the CARE Fellowship, I gained the courage to pursue the things I wanted to see for children in all cultural and marginalized communities."
Lynn Barten
"I participated in the CARE Fellowship as a family child care provider from central MN … Seventeen years after my CARE Fellowship, I decided it was time to advocate for child care and ECE in a position where I can advocate in a new way, with new time and energy, and possibilities.
At the time, the CARE Fellowship had a slight impact on me, but I was truly transformed when I applied the learning to a project I was passionate about, and the timing was right. The CARE Fellowship provided me with a broader perspective. I needed to understand how all the ECE advocates fit together, how we could collaborate to effect changes, and what my role could be in facilitating those changes."