I work with the Liberation Learning Project as a facilitator and member of the organization’s founding leadership committee.

The project is bringing together all child care workers, including unpaid and under paid child care workers, to organize community child care leadership schools throughout British Columbia.

The leadership schools will provide workshops, forums, leadership training, and other programming to strengthen the capacity of child care workers so that we can solve BC’s problem of inadequate resources going to support families in the provision of child care.

Child Care is a Shared Responsibility

Child care is a shared responsibility. Families provide the bulk of child care work – including the essential work of educating young children and bringing children into their own culture, including through language and literacy learning. Child rearing is important work, essential for the health of our communities and the individuals within it. Given that British Columbia is a multicultural society and that BC includes many First Nations communities, there is great value in having families at the centre of their own child’s cultural upbringing.

We all benefit from cultural and linguistic diversity, which is one reason why it’s so important that families perform a central role of in the provision of child care. But putting families at the centre of caring for their children doesn’t mean that families should be forced to go it on their own. Valuing families means making it a priority to support families, providing families with the resources required to care for children and meet children’s developmental needs.

Supporting Families

Communities benefit from the child rearing work of families and families benefit from the provision of adequate child care supports.

BC families are squeezed from many directions – facing longer commutes, unaffordable housing costs, shrinking pensions, higher university and other post secondary education costs, uncertain job security, and expensive drug and other out-of-pocket health and dental costs. These squeezes affect all families, especially middle, working and low-income families.

Universal, public and accessible child care is one way for communities to lessen the squeeze on BC families, making all families more secure and strengthening communities for everyone.

Time Together

The biggest cost from so many squeezes comes in the form of less time for families to be together. Lower wages means longer hours. Higher costs to housing, education and health care means more time at work. Single-wage earner families and vulnerable workers face the biggest burden in terms of time together, because time at work ensures family survival but takes away family time. Most families value time together, but when faced with insecurity and an uncaring economic reality families do what’s required just to get by.

Publicly provided child care programs, for children of all ages, integrated with a solid and caring public education system, should be at the heart of BC’s commitment to our communities and families. At the heart of this system should be the values of cultural diversity, family involvement in child care, and time together. The more conveniently located, the more flexible, the more realistic in terms of supporting working family schedules, the better.

Child care at the level of community, as part of a hub of community programs centred on building community strengths and bringing people together, can provide BC’s many peoples, places, and cultures with support and resources for strengthening families and improving the quality of life in BC.

Beyond the provision of care programs, quality child care meets the needs of children by providing resources and communities for children to thrive. I believe that the goal of child care and early learning should be for each child to achieve their full potential, in present time. Just as for adults, children have a right to be involved in community life and to contribute to the construction of our shared cultures. That’s why at at the heart of my work with children is unconditional respect.

Transformative Social Movement Organizing

The aim of the Liberation Learning Project is to support the development of a broad social movement based in communities across British Columbia. To do this, we’re starting by building a network of community child care leadership schools. Each school will be grassroots-run, with members facilitating workshops and raising revenues to support leadership development programs.

The schools will be linked together, forming connections across communities. The common values of unconditional respect, universal dignity and shared responsibility will be at the heart of each school. Within this values-framework we’ll work to foster diversity, creativity and innovation by encouraging divergent approaches to community organizing and leadership development. At the core of each project will be community building, through social events, common meals, and retreats.

The project was launched in September 2009, with the first workshop held in Vancouver in the basement of a housing co-op in Vancouver. Just a few months later the founding leadership committee was formed. About a dozen child care workers, including moms, nannies, home care providers, and early childhood educators, met to map out our shared vision for child care in British Columbia.

We’re still in the process of formally forming the organization, which will be incorporated as a community benefits cooperative. We should be done with this process by the end of 2010. Workshops were held in Vancouver and Victoria, with plans to expand to other communities in 2010-11.