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Good Beginnings Alliance - Policy Initiatives

Good Beginnings is dedicated to encourage public policies that promote our mission - all children, prenatal to age 5 will be safe, healthy and ready to succeed. Towards this end, we provide public officials with data and other information, as well as convene appropriate stakeholders around the relevant issues. In addition to our continual contact with a wide variety of organizations, we advance our policy agenda through several vehicles. School Readiness and P20 are two major initiatives that are advancing our mission.

Legislative Advocacy
Good Beginnings has a responsibility to provide public officials with quality data and research to encourage informed public policy decisions. We meet with Governor Lingle and her Cabinet, as well as Legislators. During the Legislative Session, Good Beginnings provides testimony on issues affecting young children. We develop bi-annual issue briefs to provide legislators with research and data on young children so that they will make informed decisions.

Issue Briefs highlight Hawaii's financial commitment to children, prenatal to age 5, ongoing gaps in services, as well as other topical issues such as school readiness. For the first time, the Briefs now feature material connecting state policy to community action in our Partnership for Hawaii's Keiki (PHK) communities. Wherever possible, efforts will be made to connect Legislators representing the PHK communities to both community action and statewide policy. These efforts represent a re-commitment on the part of Good Beginnings to provide greater connectivity in our work at the community and state levels.

Keiki Funders Network
One of Good Beginnings roles is to enhance the level and quality of resources available to young children. With generous support from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Good Beginning now staffs a network of public and private funders. The goal of the Keiki Funders Network of Hawaii is to deepen local and national funders' appreciation of the importance of the early years. The Network also seeks to increase funders' capacity to support on going or new initiative and/or programs.

Initial conveners of the Keiki Funders Network of Hawaii include Samuel N. and Mary Castle Foundation, Consuelo Zobel Alger Foundation, Kamehameha Schools, Queen Lili'uokalani Children's Center, Atherton Family Foundation, Aloha United Way, Harold Castle Foundation, and the Department of Human Services. All public and private funding organizations are invited to participate.

The Network provides speakers on critical issues affecting young children and their families. Site visits that illustrate innovative practices complement these talks. Facilitated discussion groups among trustees and program staff grapple with cutting edge ideas and difficult public policy decisions. A website helps to disseminate data trends, relevant publications and research, as well as information about successful approaches taking place in Hawaii and nationally. Ultimately, interested participants will examine opportunities for collaborative grant making.

As a result of membership in the Network:

• Members will have better information upon which to base their funding decisions;
• Members will have more strategic in how they plan and implement their program responses;
• Members will collaborate better with others; and
• Members will say that their efforts in supporting the early years are more productive.

Business Engagement
In 2000, Good Beginnings engaged in its first-ever, business-focus public awareness effort. We launched a campaign to raise awareness and funds within the Hawaii business community. Members of Hawaii Business Roundtable (HBR) have generously given both financial and strategic support to us. With their help we established the Hawaii Early Education Fund and we published An Employers Guide to Work and Family Solutions. Each year, we seek underwriting from HBR members for our annual Ho'olaulima No Na Keiki Awards event and support for our bi-annual fundraiser An Evening for Hawaii's Keiki.

Good Beginnings Alliance is a member of Voices for America's Children.