Aspen Institute | Ascend Fellows
As a thought leader and proliferator of 2Gen, the Liz Blake Giving Fund partners with Ascend at the Aspen Institute to sustain the Early Childhood & Equity Fellowship.
Blythe Robinson, 2023 Ascend Fellow from Sheltering Arms
Ascend at the Aspen Institute believes that if we want a world-class early childhood and learning experience for every child in America, we need a diverse cadre of leaders, well-connected, well-prepared, and powerfully positioned to build the political will, change systems, and drive the policy agenda that makes that happen. Ascend has a goal to develop 260 racially diverse leaders ready, willing, and positioned to make early education one of America’s greatest achievements.
“Reaching children and their families in their earliest years is vital to building intergenerational prosperity and well-being.” — Anne Mosle, vice president of the Aspen Institute and founder and executive director of Ascend.
The primary goal of the fellowship is to advance the economic mobility and well-being of children and families by investing in values-based leadership to catalyze innovation and accelerate solutions-focused, equitable, and effective early learning, care, and family-serving systems, and narrative change.
From enhancing how nonprofits serve families to changing public policies and services, current and past fellows seek to:
Build services and policies designed by and for parents and caregivers to drive national early learning, racial equity, and family well-being in systems of care and well-being as well as solutions and learning from Indigenous wisdom and cultural traditions.
Help families cross the economic divide and climb the economic ladder.
Advance equitable health and housing solutions.
Ensure access to early education and food security.
Ensure new parents, children, and their families have access to mental and behavioral health services,
Expand access to early care and education in rural and immigrant communities and invest in the early childhood workforce across the country,
Apply lessons from Indigenous communities to home visiting and well-being across the lifespan,
Build family stability to help keep families together and children out of child welfare systems, and
Expand guaranteed income and other sources of capital, so families can determine their own paths.
Georgia has a long history of collaboration with Ascend at the Aspen Institute, which helped to forge a collaborative partnership between “Bright from the Start,” Georgia’s Department of Early Care and Learning (DECAL) and the Technical College System of Georgia (TCSG). In order to sustain and grow this collaboration, the Liz Blake Giving Fund also supported a Post-Secondary Success Policy Acceleration Grant through Ascend in 2021.
“Creating real solutions for student parents is within the reach of governors and state leaders through the incentivizing and scaling of cross-sector solutions.” — Amanda Winters, National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and PSP National Advisor.
