The Popular Education Circle is building skills among child care providers to bring our children into organizing work. In 2016:
- CPC created a workshop series based in popular education, and we’re working with 14 participants from different communities, mainly communities of color, to build skills in providing child care focused on the social justice movement. Together the participants are developing knowledge, analysis and reflection on issues related to child development, social justice issues such as racism, oppressive structures, and equity (gender, racial, language, social, and more).
- Participants are also creating artistic tools for the implementation of age appropriate activities that stimulate kids to be inventive and raise awareness for social justice. We also focus on creating spaces for exchange of experiences and healing for people who do child care.
- Participants in the training program are already putting their new skills into action. Child care has been transformed in CPC meetings! For example, while participants deepened interpretation skills at a Language Justice practice session, their bilingual children created a word tree and talked about language, communication, and bilingual spaces. And while faith leaders marched and held a vigil to speak out against violence against black and brown bodies, their children participated in age appropriate activities about how people can be hurt and the intersections of violence and racism.
- CPC and participants in the training program provided child care for more than 50 kids of all different ages at the annual conference of the Southeast Immigrants Rights Network (SEIRN). Our work with the children focused on immigration, Standing Rock Water Protection and Black Lives Matter movements.