Last week, Nick Vucic, Government Affairs Associate, and Sara Miller, Communications and Public Affairs Specialist, flew across the country for a trip to Helena, Montana for a two-day on-site advocacy training.
The training began with some ice breakers and an overview of advocacy vs. lobbying followed up with a couple of hours of updates from the federal level. The team talked about CCDBG, the Proposed Rule from HHS, the Government Shutdown, Sequester, and more. After many questions and answers, the room moved into breakout groups to discuss goals and barriers the state of Montana is facing in the early childhood community.
Each group then presented their goals and barriers and the group ended the day playing a rousing version of Advocacy Jeopardy.
The following morning, the training started earlier than planned and with coffee in hand, for another day of learning about advocacy.
Sara led everyone through the Child Care Aware® of America website pointing out resources and ways that the organization is here to help members in the states and parent engagement, which was a great way to transition into a discussion about social media.
We discussed Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and how to make all forms of social media help advocacy efforts. There were a few questions and then we moved into the final portion of the day: takeaways and next steps.
We were excited to see that many advocates in Montana were excited to learn about all of the great movement going on at the federal level and to gain more knowledge about making social media work for them.
