Thank you for joining Groundwork Ohio’s first ever Making this Moment a Movement 5-Day Virtual Advocacy Challenge. This challenge comes at a crucial time as state legislators are currently participating in the Ohio biennial budget process, which will lay the groundwork for early childhood policies and investments over the next two years! Now more than ever, we need to rally support across the state and elevate our voices to the Statehouse to urge legislators to make young children and their families a top priority in the state budget.
To help support you in your advocacy efforts, we created this 5-day virtual challenge to provide you with easy tools and resources to effectively engage in early childhood advocacy. Each challenge day will only take 5 minutes of your time, making advocacy easier than ever! By the end of the week, we will check our advocate leaderboard consisting of those who participated throughout the week and award top advocates with a small prize.
Together, we can make this moment a movement.
Day 1: Share Your Voice & Story
Whether you’re a parent, family member, early childhood professional, community leader, business owner, or advocate, sharing your experiences and stories with your state representative and senator is powerful. Legislators want and need to hear from you in order to better inform their decisions at the Statehouse. For day 1 of our advocacy challenge, we are asking you to share your story with Groundwork by submitting a short video through our video collection platform GatherVoices.
Recording a video is quick and easy – just follow the prompts on the screen! Once you submit your video, we will share it with legislators and our network to urge others to join your lead and advocate for Ohio’s youngest learners.
Record a 1-2 minute video explaining why you are advocating for young children by clicking here.
Read our budget blog post by clicking here and learn more about the state budget and how you can participate in the process.
Watch this video to learn how others across the state are using their platforms to advocate for early childhood.
We appreciate your time and commitment to advocating for young children. Each day, 5 participating individuals will be randomly chosen to receive a $25 electronic gift card via email. At the end of the week, we will randomly choose one individual to receive a mini library package with 10 children's books featured in our Book Recommendations for Young Learners resource. (Note: State policymakers, legislative staff, executive agency staff, and state employees will not be included in the random drawing and are not eligible to receive a reward.)
Share the virtual advocacy challenge with your network by forwarding the challenge week sign-up link here. Want to engage further? Post about the challenge week on social media and use the hashtag #LayingTheGroundwork and tag @GroundworkOhio for a chance to be retweeted.
Need help? Contact Julia Jackels at jjackels@groundworkohio.org.