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This is Marion. After having her own children, she decided to become an early education teacher.

After 25 years of working with hundreds of children ages 0-5, Marion is a seasoned early childhood educator. She opened her own childcare center a decade ago, which is still in operation with 3 classrooms, 7 teachers, and 1 administrative staff.

As passionate as Marion is about what she does, there are some hard challenges weighing on her.

Can you help support her & her center? Hover and click on the illustration to learn more about Marion's challenges.

Early childhood educators have some of the lowest salaries in the country.

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Society doesn’t understand the skills needed for early childhood education.

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With parents unable to pay more for care, the center is at risk of closing.

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Early childhood educators have some of the lowest salaries in the country.

Marion loves her work, contributing to such a cornerstone of early childhood development, and getting to know the families she serves. But, she’s had the same salary for years and remains unable to raise it, despite the rising cost of living.

Nearby, a large, retail chain store has opened and is offering roles with a higher base salary and a more generous benefits package. With her retirement looming, Marion finds herself debating a change in industry, risking closing her center and laying off her employees. This would leave dozens of families without the care they rely on.

Society doesn’t understand the skills needed for early childhood education.

When people find out what Marion does for a living, they often comment “it must be fun to sit and play with babies all day” or “they're too young to learn, it's not education for them.”

With parents unable to pay more for care, the center is at risk of closing.

Parents are already paying as much as they can to send their children to Marion’s center. Marion’s staff are threatening to leave if they don’t receive raises due to inflation. Yet, the center is barely making ends meet. As workers move towards higher-paying roles, she’s struggling to retain them.

How do you want to help?

Click on the solutions you want to implement to see their impact.

✔ Solution Selected

Advocacy for public support for care

Local, state, and federal policies can support the care movement. Sign a petition for the extension of the Child Care Stabilization program, follow current legislative initiatives to support care, support a campaign, or understand previous policies enacted for child care.

The Impact:

The advocacy efforts across the country led to a national focus on addressing the care crisis. Thanks to the community's advocacy, states across the country are enhancing their early childhood offerings, which will directly support centers like Marion's.

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✔ Solution Selected

Advocacy to protect domestic workers

Advocates are fighting for the inclusion of domestic work in policies across the country to protect & enhance the rights of domestic workers. There are opportunities to sign petitions, vote, & call your representatives to mobilize our collective power for the care economy.

The Impact:

After Marion and her staff pushed advocacy efforts, their community is putting pressure on local governement officials to make change to increase support for early childhood education.

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✔ Solution Selected

Campaigns to support care

Leaders in the care economy are working to build compelling, informative, and thought-provoking campaigns that showcase the realities of childcare work, how to access benefits, and where to go for support.

The Impact:

Thanks to a campaign on the realities of early childhood education that Marion distributed to her networks, her friends and family are more interested in understanding her daily work and advocating themselves for the enhancement of the care industry.

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✔ Solution Selected

Care worker unions

Child care unionization to organize collective bargaining agreements to benefit the care workforce as a whole is gaining momentum. This approach, called 'sectoral bargaining,' has the power to make sweeping changes for large numbers of care workers and providers.

The Impact:

After unionizing, Marion & her staff are part of a collective bargaining agreement that will increase their base salaries alongside the rise of inflation over the next decade.

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✔ Solution Selected

Family-sustaining wages

Provide sustainable salaries that factor in cost-of-living and the ability for employed parents to raise a family and pay for childcare supports. This ultimately propels parents in the workforce and can boost the economy.

The Impact:

Thanks to increased wages that support a family, Marion can continue working as an early childhood educator and the center can remain a competitive place to work in her community.

After the plant implemented family-sustaining wages for all workers, Amari was able to afford extended day services for their child so they could keep their job at the plant.

Thanks to implementing family-sustaining wages, Jia saw the immediate impact on her staff. People were less worried about missing work or needing to quit. With decreasing the missed workdays, Jia is already seeing the cost of higher wages pay off.

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✔ Solution Selected

Innovative solutions & pilots

There's a variety of innovators in the care space who are piloting new ways to support the care economy. Some examples to learn more about: The Mom Project, Holding Co., Mother Honestly, NDWA, Moms First, The Early Childhood and Business Advisory Council, Instant Teams, & more.

The Impact:

Thanks to the support of innovators, Marion's center was awarded funding that will support the launch of a pilot program that gives direct cash to early education centers, allowing her to focus on teaching rather than figuring out how to make ends meet.

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✔ Solution Selected

Listening to stories of domestic workers

Proximity to an issue helps people understand the realities & barriers others face. National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA) has resources to better understand the stories of workers.

The Impact:

Marion and her team circulated videos that expose the pitfalls of the care industry's business model. With this effort, local business leaders are interested in reorienting the narrative that care is a family issue to see care as a business opportunity.

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✔ Solution Selected

Philanthropic grants to early childhood education

Private funding or direct cash to support the childcare economy can enhance the quality, availability, and affordability of childcare. Organizations, like The Raising Child Care Fund, pool funding to make grants to the early childhood education system.

The Impact:

Thanks to the philanthropic community's support for early childhood education, Marion was able to increase wages across the board at her center, which will allow her to continue working in her dream profession.

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✔ Solution Selected

State or local subsidies

Many governments try to lighten the financial burden on care providers through subsidies. Funds might be used to lower costs for low-income families, pay expenses during holidays or breaks, or compensate for absences.

The Impact:

After being awarded additional funding for low-income families, Marion can continue serving some of the children whose families are the most in-need of care without raising costs.

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✔ Solution Selected

Subsidized salaries for care workers

Governments can provide investments to subsidize salaries for childcare to remain competitive & retain the infrastructure of the care economy. The American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) supported childcare workers on a federal level through the Child Care Stabilization program. There are programs on a state & local level that can boost salaries to retain workers & maintain availability of services for families.

The Impact:

After applying for government subsidies, the center's wages could increase, allowing Marion and her staff to make livable wages.

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