The Arizona Early Childhood Alliance (AZECA) will host its Early Childhood Day on Wednesday, March 11, from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. at the Arizona State Capitol. The annual day of advocacy brings together families and early childhood champions to raise awareness of the importance of a child’s earliest years.

The Early Childhood Day will also feature Arizona’s first-ever Strolling Thunder, a flagship advocacy event of ZERO TO THREE’s national Think Babies campaign to bring attention to the many issues that affect what babies and families need to thrive. Key priorities include quality and affordable child care, time for parents to bond with their babies, nurturing healthy emotional development and promoting strong physical health and nutrition.

Throughout the morning, families and early childhood advocates will attend breakout sessions on a variety of legislative topics and will have the opportunity to meet with their legislators.

Schedule of events:

• 8 a.m. Check-in and registration, coffee and breakfast served
• 8:30 a.m. Welcome from AZECA Leadership Team
• 8:50 a.m. Group photo at the Liberty Bell
• 9-10 a.m. Break-out sessions and activities
• 9:30 a.m. Capitol Museum tour
• 9:50 a.m. Strolling Thunder parade and participant photo
• 10-11 a.m. Break-out sessions and activities
• 11 a.m.-12 p.m. Break-out sessions and activities
• 12 p.m. Capital Museum tour

The Arizona State Capitol is located at 1700 W. Washington St., Phoenix, AZ 85007

Advance registration for the AZECA Early Childhood Day is required at azeca.org.

This past December when the new federal budget was signed, Congress once again recognized the importance of giving all children access to high quality early childhood experiences. The new budget includes an increase of $13.4M in child care assistance funding for Arizona’s children and families.

This is the second time in recent years that the child care assistance program has gotten additional resources. The previous increase of $56M annually was used to serve more children and to begin reducing the large parent co-payments that made it impossible for some families to use the assistance even if they qualified for it. Though these investments are a good start, Arizona is still a long way from affordable child care for low income families. The parent co-pay remains too high and no where close to the federal benchmark for assuring equal access to quality child care. Parents shouldn’t have to choose between quitting their job or putting their children in potentially unsafe care.

This legislative session, in addition to continuing to serve more families, we encourage lawmakers and the Governor to prioritize using the new federal dollars to further reduce the parent co-pay so that we can get closer to the goal of making safe and affordable care available to all of Arizona’s children.