Worthy Wage Day is coming on May 1. This is a great opportunity to educate the public about the work we do in our child care centers, and also to energize your staff while focusing on our shared struggle to raise pay and benefits for the child care workforce.

Here are two ideas on how to celebrate Worthy Wage Day:

1. Have coffee and donuts for parents at your center. Offer them:

a. A "Hands Up for Worthy Wage Day!" pin. You may also use this template to create stickers.
b. An AFT Grow Smart from the Start growth chart.
(Click here to request these items. Please note: Quantities are extremely limited.)

2. Create a public "awards" event for the morning of May 1, Worthy Wage Day.
Give a "Children's Champion" award to an elected official who in the preceding year helped the early childhood education field, or your center in particular, by:

• Advocating for high-quality early childhood education.
• Sponsoring legislation. 
• Creating a new partnership or collaboration.
• Helping your center in some way.

Perhaps no official stepped up to help this year? In this case, you can quickly create an opportunity for a public personage to "job shadow" at your center for a few hours in the next weeks before May 1. Then you can give them an award.

The awards' ceremony could occur at your center on the morning of Worthy Wage Day. You can time it to include:

• Parents dropping off their children (offer them coffee and donuts).
• A public official. 
• Media from local morning TV news.
• Print media (education, policy and family beat reporters).

Use these AFT resources to help plan your event:

• Sample invitations to parents to come for donuts on Worthy Wage Day (Microsoft Word)
• Sample invitations to parents to come for the Children's Champion Award ceremony on Worthy Wage Day (Microsoft Word)
• Sample media advisory (To be posted April 30)
• Sample press release with "worthy wage" data for reporters (To be posted April 30) 
• Sample award worth framing, which you can print in-house or at a local copy shop (Microsoft Word)
• Sample flyer to encourage parents and community members to join AFT's associate program (To be posted April 30).

Tell us what you are planning! We'd love to hear about it. Contact us at ece@aft.org.