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Singing from the Same Songbook for Colorado’s Families and Children

by Stephanie Monahan, The Civic Canopy

stephaniemonahan-e1428360449187Achieving the vision of the Early Childhood Colorado Framework that all Colorado children are valued, healthy, and thriving is no small task and it can’t be done by any one individual or organization alone. In order to realize this important vision, we all must work together with and on behalf of children and families. Identifying shared priorities, ensuring all important voices are included at the table, and tracking progress over time. And Colorado is seeing real progress in so many areas but in particular around communications and messaging, with countless passionate people coming to the table to share their energy and work tirelessly to achieve this shared vision.

The power of many coming together to spark change has never been more evident for the Partnership than with our work on the Shared Message Platform. Focused on promoting child, family, and community resilience, the shared message bank includes messaging for early childhood stakeholders to use across the state in order to speak from a collective voice, engage more audiences and mobilize action to address early adversity and toxic stress to augment social norms and shift systems and change policy and investments. What makes it amazing to us is that these messages and the accompanying resources aren’t “owned” by any organization or entity, but rather, brought together by many stakeholders under the umbrella of the Early Childhood Colorado Partnership to develop a message bank that can be used freely by anyone and everyone across our state.

In addition to the message bank being available to everyone, it can be adapted to match the unique strengths and challenges of communities statewide. Rather than a script where everyone across our state is saying the same thing, it provides a “songbook,” so to speak, where we are all singing the same tune, but in tones that best meet our needs.

How are you using the message bank, and what wheels are turning in your head? We want to hear who is using it and how it’s been effective for you! Visit the Campaign Map on our website to see how others are using the Messaging Platform and share your own community’s work as well.

The Partnership is blogging!

The Early Childhood Colorado Partnership works to bring together diverse voices in Colorado’s early childhood landscape. This new blog feature will serve as a platform to dive deep into our efforts and focus areas, including highlighting partner voices. Each month will include blog posts on a specific topic, starting with the Shared Message bank in October. Keep an eye out for a post by Stephanie Monahan from The Civic Canopy on Monday, October 31st.

If you want to share your story or know someone who should share their story via our blog, email earlychildhood@civiccanopy.org.

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