Child Care Aware® of America is pleased to announce the call for nominations for the 2024 Board of Directors opens on August 18!  

During the COVID-19 pandemic, child care gained unprecedented levels of funding and public and policymaker support.  Now more than ever, we need to capitalize on that growing support to build a sustainable child care system that works for families, child care providers, businesses, and communities and fuels our economic prosperity and wellbeing. 

CCAoA’s vision is that every family in the United States has access to a high-quality, affordable child care system.  We work to realize that vision by: 

Negotiations for annual federal funding are in full swing, and we have a fight ahead to ensure child care and early education programs receivethe necessary investments to support children, families, and communities.

“Some of my favorite memories are of being in the care of my grandmother, who was a family child care provider, but Nana to me. I wanted my own daughter to enjoy that same feeling of love and security Nana provides when it was time for her to be in child care. Finding a child care environment that surrounded my daughter with love and recognition that her Black is beautiful in the same way that Nana cared for me was important. That culturally responsive care that we yearned for was ultimately found in a Black child care provider.”  

“My career in child care policy made me more familiar with the history of child care in America. As I searched down the timeline to get to the origin of the experience that families and providers face, I made the connection that child care in the U.S. is rooted in chattel slavery. Enslaved Black women were forced (and trusted) to nurture their oppressors. Black women cared for (including breastfeeding) their enslaver’s children, while their own children were sold, or forced to work alongside them.”  

  - Keisha Nzewi, Co-Founder, Black Californians United for Early Childcare Education