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Trying Together’s executive director recently discussed the organization’s mission and the need for an increase in early childhood education workers’ wages on the Women and Girls Foundation podcast.

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The podcast, led by host Camila Rivera-Tinsley, frequently features guests who are “working toward a more equitable future” and tackles such topics as gender, racial, and environmental justice.

In a recent episode, Tinsley discussed issues surrounding early child care – from parents seeking child care for their children so they can work to those employed in the field in need of higher wages – with Cara Ciminillo, Trying Together’s executive director.

On the podcast, Ciminillo talks about how she got involved in early childhood education, April’s Month of the Young Child, the origin of Trying Together’s name, and the organization’s advocacy efforts during the state budget season.

Ciminillo talked about how early childhood education is an overwhelmingly women-led field.

“Probably about 96 percent of all early learning experiences and child care experiences are led by and provided by women,” she said. “It is a women-led field and has a high number of women of color who lead the work in this industry. They are brain builders.”

Ciminillo said the success of many of the state’s industries is tied to whether communities provide adequate child care options. She added that the state’s early childhood education teacher shortage is caused by the industry’s low wages.

“If you want to solve (the problems of) an industry’s workforce, you have to solve for the child care workforce,” she said. “It’s very much a challenge in terms of our collective economic mobility if we don’t solve the economics of child care and the wages they make.”

 To learn more, watch Ciminillo and Rivera-Tinsley discuss early childhood education on the Women and Girls Foundation podcast.