Tag Archive: voices

  1. Share Your Story: Back to School

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    As children across Virginia head back to school, many families are feeling uncertain. Lawmakers have taken steps to expand access to child care, to increase food benefits and offer free school meals and to provide child tax credits. These supports are necessary and appreciated. At the same time, there are challenges that will make this year’s back to school transition difficult such as lack of paid leave, long waiting lists to enroll in child care programs and costly back to school purchases.

    We believe that lawmakers will help families and we know they have the ability to provide help. Right now Congress is considering the Build Back Better recovery plan that includes 12 weeks of paid family leave, additional funding for child care, extensions of the monthly child allowance and more. This is the opportunity to pass a comprehensive package to provide families and caregivers with the support you need. With so many things happening in the world at once, we need to bring the focus back to children and families. We need you to share your story.

    Complete this form to share your story.

    You have a couple of options…

    1. type up your story and submit or

    2. submit your name and we’ll follow up to interview you and record a story.

    We will connect with you to approve your story before it shared and let you know more about where and how it can be shared. We would like to collect as many stories as possible in the first two weeks of children going back to school. We appreciate your patience in reviewing your story and getting back to you.

    We can’t wait to hear from you.

  2. We’re Hiring: Advocacy and Engagement Manager

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    Voices for Virginia’s Children is hiring an Advocacy and Engagement Manager. As the Advocacy and Engagement Manager, you will be responsible for identifying advocacy opportunities, developing traditional, digital, and grassroots engagement and advocacy strategies, and mobilizing advocates to support policy priorities.  

    Working at Voices is an opportunity to lend your voice and your skills to amplify those of children and their families throughout the Commonwealth. Relationship building is central to this position. We would like to hire an individual that can relate and connect with the communities that they will be working with.  

    Responsibilities include:

    Advocacy (50%)

    • Supports the Racial Truth and Reconciliation Virginia campaign and coalition to include advocates and organizations representative of all of Voices issue areas across the state 
    • Provides technical assistance and support to Racial Truth and Reconciliation committees, trauma-informed community networks, and other stakeholders across the state
    • Supports partner policy agendas and Voices unified policy agendas 
    • Serves as a liaison between the Voices policy team, community members, and partners 
    • Recruits, trains and empowers advocates to connect with local, state, and federal elected and appointed leaders in collaboration with the appropriate policy team member 
    • Uses advocacy toolkits and resources to train advocates and provides support to the policy team members during all of Voices advocacy days in addition to leading a cross-disciplinary advocacy day each year  
    • Collaborates with Research Director to provide community-level data assessments to identify unique challenges, policy priorities, and the impact of policy 

    Outreach and Engagement (50%)

    • Builds relationships with organizations and individuals directly impacted by Voices priorities, including youth, parents, professionals, and stakeholders to ensure advocacy is at the core of all policy efforts and connects these relationships to the appropriate policy team member 
    • Provides strategic policy-oriented outreach and engagement with a concentration in trauma-informed care, equity, and community and social issues in Voices key issue areas 
    • Facilitates meetings, provides policy updates, and conducts focus groups to inform and engage the community and partners in Voices’ work  
    • Works collaboratively with the Communications Team to capture stories and empower individuals to share these stories through various internal and external outlets  
    • Manages Voter Voice (increase number of people involved)

    Organizational Responsibilities

    • Demonstrates Voices as an organization that prioritizes policy change through the identification of legislative champions and strengthened relationships 
    • Works collaboratively with the Chief Philanthropy officer to provide information and input on relevant grant proposals and reports 
    • Applies a trauma-informed & equity-informed lens to all responsibilities 
    • Actively participates in staff meetings and organizational-wide events 
    • Other duties as assigned

    Please send resumes to info@vakids.org.