Our vision For
Early Childhood Education:
Each and every child thrives and learns in a society dedicated to ensuring they reach their full potential.
Our Mission
MaineAEYC promotes high-quality early learning for each and every child, birth through age 8, by connecting practice, policy, and research. We advance a diverse, dynamic early childhood profession and support all who care for, educate, and work on behalf of young children.
Our Work
Public Policy & Advocacy
MaineAEYC informs our network about local, state, and federal policies affecting children, families, and educators and advocates on behalf of the early care and education workforce, families, and young children as part of our commitment to developing a system of quality early childhood education.
We encourage educators & families to join us in this work, providing tools & resources to get involved and self-advocate. This is why we created the LEaP program. Participants learn best practices and strategies in speaking about the most pressing, critical early childhood issues. They participate in activities and trainings, speak with administrators and elected officials, and organize with other educators, parents, and community members.
Professional learning
MaineAEYC is committed to providing high-quality professional learning opportunities to early childhood (birth to 8) educators across the state so that they can best serve the children and families they work with.
This work includes facilitating the T.E.A.C.H. scholarship, which provides child care workers with the funds to cover almost all of their tuition, book expenses, and paid study time as they pursue associate or bachelor degrees in the early childhood field.
We also host and coordinate the annual Statewide ECE Conference, providing 12 hours of training on important topics in the field.
Facilitation and support
MaineAEYC strives to support educators, families, and children to thrive. For this work, we facilitate several smaller projects, including:
Maine Early Childhood Outdoors Network (MeECO), an inclusive statewide network made up of early childhood stakeholders who support outdoor and nature-based learning experiences.
Building Bridges, a program to facilitate collaboration in communities from child care facilities to preschools to elementary schools so that they work together to develop solutions that address the needs of children, teachers, and families.
Our Impact
60
Over 60 Million dollars in ongoing state funding for the ECE Workforce
With MaineAEYC, early childhood educators and parents raise their voices for change. Our grassroots organizing in public policy education and outreach has helped achieve expanded early childhood consultation, a simpler process for families to secure child care subsidies, subsidy reimbursement rates for providers raised to the federally recommended 75th percentile, and wage supplements for early educators working in child care.
525
Members of MaineAEYC—and counting!
We have valued professional members from Family Child Care, Elementary Schools, Child Care Centers, Head Start programs, and Higher Ed. Parents and families of young children are also joining MaineAEYC to ensure the best for their children and the teachers who serve them!
19
Years Serving Educators and Families in Maine
MaineAEYC became an affiliate of NAEYC in 2004. We are a statewide membership organization. We partner with local, state, and national organizations to multiply our impact.
Our Core Values
We are propelled by our commitment to upend our own structural and organizational inequities, and to ensure our actions are grounded in our values.
Excellence and Innovation—We take risks, imagine new ways of working, and challenge existing assumptions, while remaining fiscally responsible and accountable to our mission and members.
Transparency—We act with openness and clarity.
Reflection and Measurement—We consider multiple sources of evidence and diverse perspectives to review past performance, note progress and successes, and engage in continuous quality improvement.
Equity and Opportunity—We advocate for and establish policies, practices, and systems that promote full and inclusive participation. We confront biases that create barriers and limit the potential of children, families, and early childhood professionals.
Collaborative Relationships—We share leadership and responsibility in our work with others. We commit time and effort to ensure diverse participation and more effective outcomes. We act with integrity, respect, and trust.
Care and Commitment—We are dedicated to the well-being, belonging, and connectedness of our staff, volunteers, and members.
Join Us
Early childhood educators and families work every day to make a difference in the lives of young children. NAEYC and MaineAEYC work to support these remarkable individuals by amplifying their voices and passionately advocating for what we know to be right for children, their families, and educators.
Become a member
NAEYC and MaineAEYC offer resources for families and professionals, policy alerts, online communities, publications, events and more.
Donate
Help MaineAEYC promote high-quality early learning and safe, joyful lives for all Maine children, birth through age 8.
Land Acknowledgement
The MaineAEYC office is in Augusta, Maine, which was settled on the territory of the Wabanaki Confederacy. We recognize and honor the current tribes who comprise the Wabanaki, the people of the Dawnland: the Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Maliseet, and Mi’kmaq Nation, who have stewarded the land for 12,000 years. We affirm their inherent sovereignty in this territory. We support their efforts for land and water protection and for cultural healing and recovery. We make this land acknowledgement in remembrance of those who lives and land were taken through genocidal strategies and commit to the ongoing work of decolonization in Maine and beyond.