Advocacy Begins with Communication and Collaboration

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    Overview

    Consider the issues in your own community that present challenges for children and families. Poverty, access to health care, affordable housing, and access to multilingual resources are just a few examples of issues that affect children and families. As an early childhood professional, you have the responsibility to communicate and collaborate with agencies and government officials to advocate for change that can positively impact children and families.

    For this Work Product, you will identify an advocacy issue relevant to your community and communicate and collaborate with agencies and/or organizations, along with government officials, to address the advocacy issue.

    Your response to this Assessment should:

    • Reflect the criteria provided in the Rubric.
    • Adhere to the required assignment length.
    • Use the APA course paper template available here. All submissions must follow the conventions of scholarly writing.
    • Properly formatted APA citations and references must be provided where appropriate.

    Professional Skills: Written Communication is assessed in this Competency. You are strongly encouraged to use the Writing Checklist and to review the Rubric prior to submitting.

    This Assessment requires submission of one (1) document that includes a two- to three-page paper and two letters you will write to an agency and government official. Save this file as CC004_firstinitial_lastname (for example, CC004_J_Smith). When you are ready to upload your completed Assessment,  use the Assessment tab on the top navigation menu.

    Instructions

    Before submitting your Assessment, carefully review the rubric. This is the same rubric the assessor will use to evaluate your submission and it provides detailed criteria describing how to achieve or master the Competency. Many students find that understanding the requirements of the Assessment and the rubric criteria help them direct their focus and use their time most productively.

    Rubric

    This assessment has three-parts.  Click each of the items below to complete this assessment.

    Part I: Advocacy Begins with Communication and Collaboration

    Identify an advocacy issue related to children and families in your community, and write a two- to three-page paper that does the following:

    • Explains what the issue is, why it is important in your community context, and why it is important to the early childhood field.
    • Selects an agency and/or organization that you will collaborate with to help you address the advocacy issue you identified.
    • Describes the mission of the agency and/or organization, and explains why you want to collaborate with this specific agency.

    Part II: Communicating and Collaborating with Agencies

    Using the agency you identified in Part I, write a two- to three-page letter to the advocacy agency. Your letter should include:

    • An explanation of the issue(s) for which you are advocating, and why the issue is important in the context of the early childhood field. Use data and/or information from the professional knowledge base to support your explanation.
    • An explanation of why you want to partner with this agency on the issue(s). Your explanation should compel the agency to want to partner with you on the issue.
    • An explanation of how you envision the partnership working, including a specific suggestion regarding how you want the organization to support your advocacy effort.

    Part III: Communicating and Collaborating with Government Officials

    Using the same advocacy issue you identified in Part I, write a two- to three-page letter to a government official in your local, state, or federal government. Your letter should include:

    • An explanation of the issue for which you are advocating, and why the issue is important in the context of the early childhood field. Use data and/or information from the professional knowledge base to support your explanation.
    • A description of the agency with whom you will partner, and how that partnership will assist in the work regarding the advocacy issue.
    • A request of the government official, explaining exactly what he or she can do to support the advocacy effort.

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