Bringing More Parents to the Equity Conversation

April 1, 2015 – Here at Michigan’s Children we operate from an equity perspective, ensuring public officials prioritize the needs of Michigan’s most challenged children – children of color and children from low-income families. Equality and equity are commonly confused, so let’s give an example to help clarify the difference. All children can attend public school from kindergarten through 12th grade free of charge. In other words, all children can equally access free public education. For some children free public schooling does not produce the same benefits because of additional challenges they may experience; such as coming to school hungry or struggling to keep up in their classes. For the children who experience challenges, additional supports such as free or reduced lunches, or quality after-school programming could boost their academic performance. Providing these supports for challenged children in addition to free public education represents equity strategies that provide targeted services to students based on what they need so that they can succeed academically.

In order to bring more parents to the equity conversation Michigan’s Children hosted an advocacy workshop at the Michigan PTA’s Annual Convention on Friday, March 27th. Mina Hong and myself facilitated a conversation with the group about the importance of using your voice to advance equity for children in Michigan who experience the most challenges. The Michigan’s Children advocacy workshops aim to get more Michiganders engaged in effective policy advocacy around children’s issues by encouraging people to build relationships with elected officials, and to strategically frame their priorities. But most importantly, we believe it is so important to get more voices involved in policy discussions. The more voices encouraging public officials to make policy decisions in the best interest of children the better!

The group of individuals who attended our workshop got very engaged in our conversation about policy advocacy. Regardless of their policy advocacy expertise level, workshop participants really dove into the details of relationship building with elected officials, and current state budget opportunities. Michigan’s Children loved to see this enthusiasm for and interest in this critically important work. We left the convention with a feeling of satisfaction that we had created a few more child advocates in Michigan.

– Cainnear Hogan

Cainnear is an intern for Michigan’s Children.  She is currently completing her MSW at the University of Michigan – School of Social Work.