DVAEYC is now First Up

Posted by First Up on June 25, 2018

For more than 50 years, DVAEYC has successfully championed high-quality early care and education for children ages birth to eight in Southeastern Pennsylvania.

In that time, we have transformed our coaching model to focus on empowering and equipping teachers with the tools they need to better support the social emotional needs of children. Over the past ten years, we’ve worked with 205 Early Childhood Education programs with a STAR 2 rating to raise the quality of these programs to STAR 3 and 4. Our ECE Fellowship has graduated and launched 85 new advocates into the field over the last eight years. And there’s so much more!

The effect of this important work has been clear, powerful, and motivating, creating a culture of continual improvement that I am honored to foster and witness day in and day out with our tremendous staff, partners, and advocates.

As we look towards our next 50 years of impact, we have engaged in a robust strategic repositioning process in order to remain responsive to the needs of our providers, professionals, partners, and the community. After six months of thoughtful and creative conversations, we’re thrilled to unveil our new name, logo, and tagline.

DVAEYC is now First Up: Champions for Early Education!

At its core, Early Childhood Education is about putting children first. Our new name, First Up, confidently embodies our core commitment to early educators. During a child’s first eight years, a high-quality early learning experience is critical to their social, emotional, and educational development. Our new name asserts that those first relationships that children develop with family, caregivers, and early childhood professionals are crucial in creating a path forward to success.

Our new tagline powerfully affirms our continued advocacy for the people, policies, practices, and places that help our youngest learners thrive. As Champions for Early Education, we will continue to work directly with early childhood educators and professionals. We will continually innovate and improve in order to provide them with best-in-class training, specialized for their needs, and offer affordable technical assistance to ensure that their organizations run effectively.

Our new logo clearly demonstrates our dedication to excellence. The symbol combines a blue ribbon with a bookmark to reinforce that Early Childhood Education professionals are champions, committed to learning in all of its forms. The arrow within the negative space represents upward momentum and a promise for the continual improvement of ourselves and our communities of impact.

Our new brand is a positive transformation for our organization, and also marks the conclusion of our longtime association with NAEYC. By moving away from a membership-based model, we are moving towards being true to First Up’s practice and longstanding commitment to serve the whole region – regardless of membership status. We value our fifty-year relationship with NAEYC and will continue to support its work.

First Up will remain responsive to the needs of our providers, professionals, partners, and the community, and we encourage you to contact us at [email protected] with any questions or comments you may have. We’d also love for you to join us at our Brand Celebration Open House on July 11, 2:00-6:00 p.m. at our offices, 1608 Walnut Street, Ste. 300, in Philadelphia!

Join us at our Brand Celebration Open House on July 11
https://www.facebook.com/events/1938590556172646/

Until then, here’s a full list of resources to help you get to know our new brand:

• View our staff’s new email addresses – http://www.firstup.org/our-staff/
• Explore our updated website – http://www.firstup.org
• Like our new Facebook page – http://facebook.com/firstupearlyed
• Follow us on Twitter and Instagram @FirstUpEarlyEd

Thank you for your continued support as we champion the highest-quality Early Childhood Education, not only for Pennsylvania’s children, but for all children.