This report contains a snapshot of the Edmonton Council for Early Learning and Care’s work and associated impacts between September 2023 and August 2024. It provides context to understand the significance of the ECELC’s advocacy and policy initiatives and demonstrates how the Council continues to work towards building an effective system of early learning and child care in Edmonton that is high quality, affordable, inclusive, flexible and culturally responsive while being publicly planned, regulated and funded, just like other core public services.

In January 2021, we launched the Journeys Project. The Journeys Project is a collaboration between the Multicultural Health Brokers Cooperative, the Community-University Partnership and the Edmonton Council for Early Learning and Care. The aim of the project was to gather rich firsthand accounts of the experiences of ethnocultural parents with young children (birth to 5 years old) in early learning and childcare (ELCC) in Edmonton. The Journeys Project drew on the cultural brokering practice and intercultural expertise of the MCHB. We engaged 30 parents from 6 ethnocultural communities: Kurdish-speaking, Eritrean and Ethiopian, Bhutanese Filipino, Spanish-speaking, and Chinese-speaking.