Please Note: The Foundation does not accept unsolicited grant applications under this program.
The Foundation’s interests in early childhood education and care reflect its commitment to ensuring that all children and their families have equitable access to the high-quality supports, services and opportunities they need to participate fully in community life.
The Foundation’s own work in support of early childhood education and care reflects two main interests. First, ensuring that public policies are designed and implemented in ways that are informed by evidence and the voices of different stakeholders, including those who might traditionally be excluded from policy making processes. And second, in helping to provide charities with the capacity and resources they need to deliver high-quality services while advancing their associative and community building work at the local, regional and national levels.
Two main goals guide this work:
- To foster, promote and support the organizational vehicles and processes that will enable charitable early childhood and care organizations to play a full role in the development of public policy related to early childhood education and care.
- To support the development of increased organizational capacity in early childhood and care charitable organizations with an emphasis on management and executive staff.
The Foundation’s early childhood education and care work affirms the right of Indigenous governments to design and deliver early learning and child care services that are distinctions-based and self-determined, consistent with the principles set out in the Indigenous Early Learning and Child Care Framework.
The Foundation makes core-funding grants to some organizations working toward these goals, and undertakes its own activities to move these strategies forward. Among the notable grants:
Canadian Child Care Federation: a core-funding grant to support this pan-Canadian organization that works to support excellence in early learning and child care. The Federation’s members come from early learning and child care communities across Canada and include provincial and territorial affiliate associations from each province and territory.
Canadian Child Care Federation: to support the work of two regional caucuses, comprising senior early learning and child care leaders – an Alberta Leaders Caucus and a Saskatchewan Leaders Caucus. The two caucuses undertake regional and national policy work and stakeholder engagements to help advance the organization, delivery and financing of early learning and child care.
The Landon Pearson Centre for the Study of Childhood and Children’s Rights at Carleton University: The Foundation provides grant funding to the Landon Pearson Centre for the Study of Childhood and Children’s Rights to support the Child Rights Academic Network (CRAN). CRAN is made up of academic researchers, legal experts and child rights advocates from across the country, the US and the UK. CRAN members teach, undertake research, policy work and community advocacy in support of child rights.