Personal Advocacy Journey

Quote:
"Your role as a leader is even more important than you might imagine. You have the power to help people become winners." --Ken Blanchard

What inspires and excites you most about your advocacy plan and being an advocate?

Being an advocate is something we are born to be. You either have it or you don’t. Advocating for something you believe in its just remarkable. What inspires me about my advocacy plan is reaching out to parents/guardians, family, staff, colleagues, other professionals in the field to help parent involvement be successful in our community. I feel motivated to inspire and help families feel safe and comfort. I feel motivated to bring a community closer. The families and children where I worked at inspired me to precede such topic. I really do believe changes will come out of this action plan. All professionals in the school building where I’m putting my advocacy plan into preparation are a big influence to my action plan as well as the new knowledge I am learning.

What challenges and/or anxieties do you feel related to engaging in the advocacy efforts you have targeted?

The challenges I feel related to engaging in the advocacy hard work I have targeted are making sure the resources are going to grab my key audience and they will understand the goals of my advocacy plan. A challenge I feel I will come across is communicating with the families in the community to really understand children in their early years and the importance nutrition is at this age. People don’t realize young children need this when they live in low income homes, but this is when they need it the most. I ask myself questions like, “what if they do not cooperate”? “What if it’s something that might not capture their interest”? There are just so many questions in my head. My anxiety with this Advocacy Action plan is making sure I am doing this plan correctly. I want everything to be perfect. I want to be ready for my plan and see results rite away.  

What do you believe will be most effective in helping you overcome any challenging emotions you may be feeling with regard to presenting and implementing your Advocacy Action Plan?

Presenting my advocacy plan will be overwhelming for me. But I know that I’m an advocate and I need to reach out to families, teachers, nurses, parent coordinators, we are a community and we are here for the children.   The most effective way to help me overcome this challenging emotion is communicating more with families and colleagues. I need to constantly remind myself I am an advocator and this will be a positive change for children and families. I feel comfortable knowing that I have a supporting team behind me; this gives me the encouragement I need.

How can you encourage others in their advocacy efforts, and how can others encourage you?

I think all my colleagues have brilliant topics and seemed prepare for their action plan. I think it’s amazing to know that there are advocates who really want to make changes in their community. Slowly but steady changes will occur to solve issues that young children in the early childhood field of education face. I think it’s important we all stay focus and not get off track in thinking changes are not going to happen, because they will happen.  I would like to see everyone working together cooperatively and alliance to each other.

Ana Daisy Lobato