An interactive session designed to provide education, tools and practice tapping in to increased wellness, peace and happiness.  Participants will gain a better understanding of hope and the connection between wellness, peace and happiness. Participants will have an opportunity to practice strategies to build better wellness and combat common obstacles.  Participants will be given hands on tools to develop habits to use in their daily lives to increase wellness, peace and happiness.

Learn evidence-based mindfulness activities and exercises that bring calm, connection and healing to you and the little ones you support, as well as tools to help build resilience. With themes such as “Gentle Breezes and Bluebirds,” "Resilient Deer In Winter," and "Happy Hippos and Inner Confidence," we’ll share techniques from our mindful activity packs that will include calming breathing exercises, restorative yoga poses and stretches, healing mantras, meditations and creative activities. We’ll also offer guidance on how you can integrate these techniques into your daily lives at home and in the classroom and leave time for questions and discussion too.

The COVID-19 pandemic has devastated the early care and education system, especially for providers, educators, families, and children. With prospects of transformative investments from the federal level unclear (at best) at this point, it’s easy to feel we’re sliding back to the dysfunctional status quo that defined our field before the pandemic – or worse. But our collective experience, painful as it has been, also points to new possibilities and opportunities that can take us to a more ambitious future – if we can build political will for it.

First Children’s Finance, NECC and Pie for Providers will team up to co-present a session of child care businesses’ access to capital in the state of Nebraska.  First Children’s Finance will share findings from their recent report, “From Banks to Blocks: How Access to Capital Shapes the Child Care Sector in Nebraska”.  NECC will share additional tips and tricks about how programs can make more money without raising parent fees. And lastly, Pie for Providers will present information about how programs may be able to maximize child care subsidy revenue.

Framed through the 3Ps Framework of Protecting, Promoting, and Preserving, this presentation shares how families and children are experiencing the dual pandemics – COVID-19 and racism and leveraging their cultural wealth. This means that we must attend to child and family healthy supports, economic stability and mobility as well as equitable access, experiences, and outcomes for young children and their families. Participants will be asked to examine how they protect children and families from trauma and stress, promote their health, wealth, and educational excellence, and preserve their cultural identity, traditions, and language. This is especially pressing for Black families and their children and other marginalized groups. Participants will be asked to engage in the uncomfortable truths while recognizing the opportunity for transforming the early care and education to meet the needs of children, families, educators, and communities.