How Early Childhood is an Investment in the Future: An Interview with Kids Forward

This year, Kids Forward – the oldest advocacy organization for children and families in the nation – celebrates its 140th anniversary of supporting children and families so they can live healthy, successful lives. To help mark this milestone, the organization has created a multimedia section of its website where site visitors can read, watch and hear the real stories of Wisconsinites working to advance the issues that matter most to families, from family child care to juvenile justice.

The multimedia section of the website, which contains print stories, video clips and podcasts, was made possible due to a grant Kids Forward received from Voices for Healthy Kids. Kids Forward uses these stories to advance its public policy efforts to find effective, long-lasting solutions that break down barriers to success for children and families in Wisconsin, notably children and families of color and those furthest from opportunity.

In the first of this four-part series, we hear from Daithi Wolfe, the early education policy analyst for Kids Forward, to learn more about the multimedia project and the organization’s commitments to helping every kid, family and community in Wisconsin thrive. In the coming weeks, we will share the real stories of people impacted by the work Kids Forward is doing.

Voices for Healthy Kids: For more than a century, Kids Forward has dedicated itself to helping children and families in Wisconsin. Why is that mission so important?

Daithi Wolfe: When children and families thrive, the whole community thrives. Children deserve a good start in life. When we can provide that for them by advancing public policy that supports families, it creates a ripple effect that benefits entire communities multiple times over.

Voices for Healthy Kids: One of the ways you are sharing the stories of the children and families you advocate for is through a multimedia story bank on your website. What went into getting it up and running?

Daithi: I need to go back four or five years because this isn’t something that happened overnight. The multimedia story bank is something we’ve been tossing around at Kids Forward for a long time, but we didn’t have the budget to make it possible. The grant we received from Voices for Healthy Kids helped us better collaborate with our partners in the Wisconsin Infant Toddler Policy Project (WITPP), including the Wisconsin Head Start Association (WHSA), Wisconsin Early Childhood Association (WECA), and Supporting Families Together Association (SFTA), so we could turn our vision into reality.

Kids Forward is a leader in data, research and evaluation and, therefore, has plenty of numbers to tell stories about why investing in children and families is important. What we didn’t have were community voices of the people who are actually impacted by the policies that we research and advocate for. So, we sought out those stories and discovered that data plus real stories with real people equals successful advocacy. 

Voices for Healthy Kids: When many think of a story bank, they think of print stories, but your multimedia story bank is so much more. Why did you want to offer different types of storytelling?

Daithi: Everyone consumes content differently, so we created a section of our website that supports that. We have written stories that are accompanied by photographs, edited podcasts and video stories. By offering different ways to learn about the children and families we advocate for, we are able to reach more people, which means a greater opportunity to make real changes for the kids and families in our state.