Advocacy - one woman at a time

Wow....child care....where to begin!  The knowledge and the belief that Canadian women and their children should have access to a publicly-funded, high quality, affordable and not-for-profit child care system has been the passion of my adult life. It has been my work, my volunteerism and my politics.

As a single mum with two toddler sons in the 1980's it was quality child care on campus that allowed me to return to university to complete my education.

It was the high cost of child care and the long waiting lists that outraged me enough to become politically active; to stand at microphones and demand that politicians pay attention to the child care issue, to write letters to newspapers, and to find my advocacy voice. I met a child care advocate and was inspired by the experiences she shared of connecting with other women across the country who also recognized the importance of the child care issue and cared enough, and were courageous enough, to do something about it. It was then I joined the Daycare Action Coalition and began trying to encourage others to speak out about child care.

After getting married and having two daughters - returning to work when the youngest was 7 weeks old - I now needed child care services for 4 children. Not an inexpensive proposition!  

Thanks in large measure to the camaraderie of brilliant and talented women advocates in British Columbia I pursued a career in the delivery of quality child care, stepped up my involvement in political advocacy through the Coalition of Child Care Advocates and have now been elected twice as a trustee to the Vancouver Board of Education with a platform that included promoting child care in every elementary school, I am currently a co-chair of the Vancouver Joint Child Care Council. I have had the honour of serving as a Director to the Canadian Child Care Federation, the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada and the Child Care Human Resources Sector Council.

Asked recently about how to keep on pursuing the goal of a Public System of Early Care and Learning in the face of provincial and federal governments that appear to have neither the ideology nor the political will to make the necessary investments - I could only reply that for me to be a child care advocate means to be ever an optomist about the possibility for positive change. And, that I believe we each have a responsibility to do whatever we can now to bring about the changes that will benefit our daughters and grandaughters and their families. 

My goal is to encourage others in several ways.

Everyone can be and should be a member of their provincial child care advocacy association AND the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada.

Everyone should take action within their sphere of influence to promote the need for publicky funded, quality, affordable, inclusive, not for profit child care.

Everyone should demand our political, business, labour and community leaders speak out for a child care system that lowers parent fees, raises staff wages and creates more quality spaces.

And, everyone should VOTE for the politicians who commit to making a child care system a Canadian reality rather than what we have now, which is Canada's shame.