Impact Highlights: Jessica Sager and All Our Kin
Do you know about the crucial role family childcare providers play in the childcare ecosystem? Recorded in November of 2022, in this interview Grant Richardson of Promise Venture Studio sits down with Jessica Sager, the co-founder, and CEO of All Our Kin, to discuss their unique approach to center providers of family childcare to ensure the children and families in their care can thrive.
There are some gems here for Social Entrepreneurs, looking to create and build organizations that are truly designed to address the root causes at the core of inequity in early childhood.
Connect with All Our Kin and Jessica through their website, www.allourkin.org. Enjoy.
Grant Richardson (shown below in italics): Hello, hello. Thank you for joining us today. I am very excited about my interview today. Just could you go ahead and say your name, your organization, and provide a short description of your venture?
Jessica Sager :30
Absolutely. And thank you for having me. I’m Jessica Sager. I am the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of All Our Kin, we deliver best-in-class training and support to home-based childcare educators so that they and the children and families in their care can thrive.
Tell us a little bit about why you do what you do.
Jessica Sager 1:00
So we know that childcare is fundamental for the well-being of children, parents, and society as a whole. Well, family childcare, women who offer home-based childcare, that’s fundamental to the whole childcare system. Family childcare is the primary source of care for infants and toddlers, families working evenings and weekends, those with barriers to transportation, and many more. If we can bring the best of what we know about both child development and business practices, to home-based childcare educators, and advocate for their inclusion in all our systems. It’s a win-win for the children and families in greatest need, and for the educators themselves.
Yes, it sounds like that impacting these providers in particular can have a real cascading impact on communities and children and families broadly. I’m curious, what pulled you into this work in particular?
Jessica Sager 2:09
Great question. So All Our Kin began at a moment 20 years ago that in some ways, like the present moment with COVID, really exposed just how fractured and broken our childcare system is. That moment was welfare reform. Another moment where we saw, we just don’t have childcare to support the children and parents in greatest need. And at that moment, as a young law student who cared about children, I went out and started talking to parents and caregivers in my community. And it was out of recognizing the strengths that existed in our community already, the many women who were already providing care with so little support, that the idea of All Our Kin was collectively born.
Awesome. You all have been deep in this work since then. So tell me a little bit more about how you’re how you all have thought about the impact and how that has changed and evolved. And I know a lot of your work today centers on equity. And so talk a little bit about how that shapes your work and how you think about achieving impact.
Jessica Sager 3:20
Yeah. So from the very beginning, All Our Kin’s work has really been grounded in a commitment to equity for children and families. Because every child should be cared for in a place that is nurturing and responsive and loving. And every parent should be able to walk out the door and go to work feeling wonderful about where their child is cared for.
But it’s also about equity for educators. Childcare is the most important job in the world. And our educators are paid poverty-level wages for doing that work way too much of the time. And so from the beginning, All Our Kin was about recognizing and valuing educators and recognizing and valuing children.
So we began with a focus on what’s happening in a childcare program. How is the child being nurtured and supported? How can we partner with these amazing teachers to bring the best of what we know about brain development? Then we realized that family childcare programs are also businesses and that educators need to be supported as entrepreneurs. So we built out a business training to help educators thrive and build wealth themselves, which is also a really important piece of the equity work, as well as onramps, to help educators set up these businesses in the first place.
And then the last piece is policy change. Because if you really care about an equitable childcare system, that means programming matters, but we also need to change the way that we fund and value teachers and children. And that means giving educators an opportunity to engage with the system and really pushing the system to listen.
Wow, y’alls work is incredible. I would love to just hear a little bit more about the economic mobility piece. Could you like it? Could you share an example or some of the stories of impact you have that show how that business training actually has led to these providers being able to have a more sustainable business or actually leverage that business to build wealth in other areas of their life? Can you tell me a little bit more about that?
Jessica Sager 5:40
Yeah, I would love to. And first, I just want to say our business training is amazing, it makes a huge difference. And I don’t want to let policymakers off the hook. Right, so we need both, we need policy change and business training.
And, again, family childcare educators are running small businesses. And there are a lot of things that educators can do to increase their earnings, like marketing effectively, predicting vacancies and filling them quickly, using bulk purchasing, and having contracts that protect them so they collect their fees on time.
We have found that just by helping educators get licensed and turn what they’re doing into a business, we can hugely increase their earnings by usually $5,000 a year. That’s significant. That’s a 25% increase right there. We also have found that when educators go on to do our business training and learn to manage their finances effectively, we can see gains of up to 90% (increase in their earnings). That number knocked me off my chair. Now, that was in pre-COVID times. And it’s a very tough time for childcare now. But even today, we’ve been able to keep well over 90% of our childcare programs open by supporting their businesses so that they’re thriving and sustainable.
I heard in the policy piece, how you all are focused on providing folks with the tools that they need to be able to advocate for themselves in that policy arena. And so it sounds like your policy priorities are being shaped by the providers you serve. I’m curious about your broader program model and as you all think about providing services that lead to the impacts you all intend to have, how those have been shaped by the providers or the folks that you all target on serving.
Jessica Sager 7:40
I think that part of what made All Our Kin effective is that we’re all about listening to educators. We have never gone in and said, “Here’s what we think should happen.” It’s always been a partnership of saying educators are experts, family, childcare educators, what do you need?
So the piece I was talking about with business, that’s a perfect example. We began with education. And we heard from our educators, we need to be able to keep our businesses open and earn a living wage. We heard from our educators, we have friends down the street who aren’t licensed, and we need you to support those folks as well. So at every stage, our programming has been shaped by educators, our policies have been shaped by educators, educators serve on our board of directors, and we have an educator advisory council that guides and shapes our programming. And we hear from our All Our Kin Community because that’s what we are a community all the time about what it is we need to offer to help educators navigate through whatever may be coming up, whether it is the hardships of COVID to racialized violence to some of the trauma that children are experiencing coming out of the pandemic, we have done our very best to respond and be there for educators every step of the way.
I am curious just to get your thoughts on this question because one of the things that I hear or that I realized quickly with All Our Kin like you all are doing a lot of things that a lot of organizations express intentions to do but never actually get to do in terms of priorities they have for deepening their impact, whether that’s having beneficiaries represented on their board of directors or having those from the community drive the programming. What about All Our Kin is unique? Or about what about All Our Kin is so special where again, beyond intentions, y’all are bringing these ideas of a liberatory organization to life.
Jessica Sager 9:50
We live by our values. I mean, we live by our values, every single person on the team is steeped in those values. We revisit them constantly. We frame every conversation that we have about decision-making in the light of those values. It doesn’t mean we’re perfect. But that is literally how we have our conversations. Our team brings a huge range of backgrounds, perspectives, and knowledge, but we have a shared vision for what an equitable childcare system looks like. And above all, no one joins the team who does not deeply and truly honor the work that family childcare educators do every day. That’s just an absolute threshold for entry into our community. And many of our staff members are former family childcare educators. So that shapes our conversation as well.
Can you share with me some of the initiatives that you are currently undertaking to deepen your impact?
Jessica Sager 10:50
Absolutely. So the first thing I will say is just in terms of our reach, we work directly with about 1000 educators across Connecticut and New York City, who are collectively reaching about 6000 children. But we are getting a lot of demand from agencies all across the country who do as you mentioned, kind of hope to do pieces of what we’re doing, and have our impact.
So we are now training agencies in 22 states, and we are reaching over 5000, educators and 40,000 children through those partnerships. And just as with the conversations we’re having in All Our Kin, we start with the values. Yes, we will teach you how to give educators great business practices, and we will offer you best practices in educational coaching, licensing support, and all those things. But it’s going to be done with a values lens. So that’s exciting to see that work in action.
In terms of our programming, I want to name that in the wake of COVID, we have been very much focused on mental health as a key priority and need that we’re seeing for children, for families, and educators themselves. And so incorporating those supports into everything that we’re doing. You know, educators need to be thriving and taken care of to be able to do this work. And, educators are well-positioned to recognize and respond to families in crisis. So making sure that educators have those tools is important to us.
Awesome. I would love to hear a little bit more about you, Jessica, outside of all our teens. So tell me a little bit more just about why you’ve chosen to work at this intersection of the workforce and early childhood. Why is this space special to you?
Jessica Sager 12:46
Yeah, I think the reason why I am drawn to this work is because of my own experience as a child. I have a brother just a couple of years younger than me, who was born with a huge range of challenges, physical, mental, and emotional, and I was in many ways his caregiver and advocate for most of my life. And he will tell you that I began All Our Kin because I saw early on how hard it can be for a child in this world who has to struggle. And that’s certainly true. But I think what I’ve realized is that it’s also because I know what the burden of caregiving feels like. And that has informed my journey. I never set out to start a nonprofit. I set out as a law student to be an advocate for children in more traditional ways. But I found myself at a historical moment, part of an amazing group of people who wanted to make a change. And I was able to use my legal training and pivot and build an organization instead.
What do you find most unique about your day-to-day life?
I get to work with educators and staff who are just the most mission-driven group of people in the world and also the most loving, joyful people in the world. You know, there is nothing like spending the day with a family childcare educator and the children in her care to give you hope for this world. And that is true for our staff as well. That is really unique to be able to do that. And then to have the honor of being able to go out and share some of those stories with the world. That’s amazing. I feel incredibly fortunate to be able to do that.
So I know a lot of folks will be wondering ways that they can support and partner in the work that you’re doing. So can you share with me a little bit about the types of partners that you work with that are most central for achieving some of your goals for impact at this moment?
Jessica Sager 14:49
Absolutely. So you know, certainly family, childcare educators all across the country, you know, we want to hear from you. If you’re watching this, you want to learn more about All Our Kin, if there are agencies on the ground that want to bring All Our Kin to their communities, or learn about our best practices, those agencies could be nonprofits, they could be provider-led groups, all kinds of groups that have come to work with us.
Also, policymakers who I hope are thinking about how to build systems that include family childcare, fund it and value it and create professional learning systems for it. I’ll also say there are a lot of folks who might not be thinking about family childcare, people who do work around health, mental health, K-12, education, and workforce development, if you want to reach families early, family childcare educators stand ready to partner with you. So I hope that some of the people watching this podcast will think about how they might be able to partner with family childcare in less conventional ways.
Can you share with me what’s next for you and your team?
Jessica Sager 16:00
We have a very bold strategic plan, as I told you, we’re reaching about 40,000 children. Now, that model has been so successful that we believe that by 2026, we can reach 160,000 children. And we are very excited about that we’re very excited to see states transform their approach to child care as part of these partnerships. We’re also doing more and more work to change the way people think about family childcare, to make sure that our educator’s stories are heard and that their voices are heard. So we’re thinking about where you can tell the story of family child care. Where can we include educators, maybe in the media, or testifying before the legislature? So all those pieces are part of what we’re thinking about to
Sounds like All Our Kin is on a rocket ship. The depth of the impact that you all are is truly meaningful. So thanks for the work that you’re leading. I would love to just ask, are there any other opportunities for our community to support your work?
Jessica Sager 17:09
Absolutely. So first of all, you know, if you are a philanthropist watching this, please consider donating to support All Our Kin’s work.
If you are a policymaker, and you would like to have a conversation with us about how you can engage with family childcare in your state or the country, please come talk to us.
And again, if you’re, running an agency or engaged in work that could incorporate pieces of what All Our Kin does, we are here and we can provide training and support to help you achieve the impact that you want to see. So please, please reach out.
And how about how folks can connect with you?
So the best way is our website, www.allourkin.org. We’re also on Twitter, we’re on Facebook, we’re on Instagram the handle is just @AllOurKin. And folks should feel free to email me. It’s just Jessica @ allourkin.org you can reach out anytime.
Well, Jessica, thank you so much for your time. As you know about the Promise community we’re all about social entrepreneurship and early childhood to improve outcomes for children and families. So broadly, our community is invested deeply in the work that you’re leading and the intention behind your work. I’m just curious if you have any closing thoughts for other social entrepreneurs in early childhood who are similarly focused on having a deep and meaningful impact on the communities they serve.
Jessica Sager 18:30
I mean, first I will say if you get the chance to partner with Promise Venture Studio, do it. It’s amazing. We partnered with Promise at All Our Kin and it helped us learn and grow. The other thing I will say is, to your earlier point about listening, listen to your partners, listen to educators, listen to parents, and listen to families. I think you really can’t go wrong if your work is driven authentically by the voices of those on the ground and if you honor and respect what they do.
Excellent. Well, thank you, Jessica.
All Our Kin is a national nonprofit leader in the movement to transform our country’s child care system. Their innovative model for training, supporting, and sustaining family child care educators creates opportunities for providers and high-quality care options for families. Learn more at https://allourkin.org/.
This interview is an episode of the Impact Highlight series by Promise Venture Studio to lift up the stories of entrepreneurs leading impactful organizations to improve outcomes for early childhood in the care workforce. Listen to more at promisestudio.org/impact-highlights.
Promise Venture Studio is a nonprofit with a mission of Supporting Innovators and Accelerating Innovations for Equity in Early Childhood Development. We envision a world where all children, no matter their background, can fulfill their innate promise. Learn more at promisestudio.org.
