Incorporating more early learning programs into faith communities across the country
Client
Sojourners
Services
Messaging, research, report creation
The Brief
The Background
Churches have always supported and shown up for young children and their families.
Faith leaders preach sermons about “the little children”. Leaders create family services like clothing exchanges and food pantries. We even create childcare and preschool education centers so young children may learn in safe, welcoming spaces.
These efforts are essential to our communities, yet the question remains: Are churches providing families and young children the supports they truly need?
Families with young children – particularly Black and Latine families in lower-income communities – often need additional resources to support early development.
The Challenge
In many cases, faith leaders don’t have the early learning expertise to create programs in their faith communities to help families thrive! They need resources to help make change happen. Sojourners is working directly with faith leaders to help them understand how their faith communities can best support early childhood development. This may mean providing young children and their families the everyday supports they need and/or leading effective advocacy efforts.
*This critical work is made possible by support from the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation.
Our Solution
Forthright collaborated with Sojourners to build a narrative describing the relationship between early childhood development and faith. These messages served as the foundation of the Flourishing Futures report.
We specifically worked to:
Revise listening surveys for parents, caregivers and clergy to gather relevant, insightful information about their experiences with the church and early childhood development;
Outline opportunities to promote the survey among parents and caregivers;
Reimagine, revise and design the Flourishing Futures reports, recommending two separate reports – one focused on the methodology and report findings, and another that spoke to the systemic barriers that families face when trying to help their young children develop and thrive.
We worked with Sojourners to develop several materials that easily distilled the report findings for clergy and policymakers, including actions steps.
We specifically created:
An Executive Summary to share the key findings and recommendations from the report.
Website landing page copy to provide a single place for Sojourners’ early childhood development work; this page houses the Flourishing Futures reports and all relevant materials.
A series of PowerPoint Presentations (to use during conference session presentations and other networking discussions).
Forthright worked with Sojourners on a set of clergy toolkits, transitioning them into guides with resources and actionable steps that clergy can use to evaluate and expand their own early childhood development offerings. These guides were directly incorporated into the Flourishing Futures reports effectively.
Our Results
Sojourners has a set of key resources ready to go to help faith leaders learn and get involved. And, after the campaign, faith leaders now have more awareness and excitement about early learning opportunities! Many are already incorporating the recommendations outlined in the Flourishing Futures report and guides into their own faith communities. Forthright also worked to amplify the report, securing several media placements specifically reaching faith leaders, including the Faithful Politics podcast and Religion Unplugged.