We Stand With Our Children

The Orange County Partnership for Young Children’s mission is to ensure that all children arrive at kindergarten healthy and ready to succeed. However, we know that, in reality, all children do not have the same opportunities to be healthy, safe and free from fear, and to thrive. Structural racism has normalized violence against people of color and created stark gaps in the distribution of and access to resources needed to support the development of children of color.

This is unacceptable. ALL children and families share the universal human rights to be safe, healthy, and free from fear. We condemn the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and too many others, whose only “crime” was being African-American. We call out white supremacist culture as a tool of oppression and honor African-American and other people of color’s resistance to this oppression. We acknowledge the responsibility of white and privilege-benefitting people to exercise their power to denounce and dismantle the system that entitles some, but not others, to life’s successes. We recognize our shared destiny as one human race.

During recent months, the importance of child care has become clear as an essential service supporting our families, communities, and the economy. This important sector is led by a diverse workforce made up predominantly of women of color, who are among some of the lowest-paid professionals in the country. Their work to provide ALL children with an educational foundation steeped in positive social-emotional development is grossly undervalued in spite of its critical importance.

We reaffirm our commitment to work both internally as an organization and externally in our community to challenge, disrupt, and dismantle the structures which impede the health, safety, and well-being of all of our young children, families, and educators.

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
– Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.