BC Aboriginal Child Care Society hosts the FNPN. It brings its more than 20 years of leadership and experience creating, sustaining and supporting First Nations ELCC. This it does in keeping with its mandates to implement the First Nations ELCC framework in ways that support Indigenous languages, cultures and knowledges via Indigenous conceptions of quality programs, and services, and partnerships and capacity development. Shared commitments with ECPN will be generative of work in all streams of the ECPN, as will cross-network collaboration and sharing.
The FNPN builds from BCACCS’ existing capacities and experience, extends its work, and shares its aims. FNPN members are responsive to community initiatives that both determine what happens within First Nations ELCC programs and with respect to how their contexts may need to change (such as is appropriate in a time of wholesale systemic transformation). FNPN members work both within established centres of First Nations ELCC and also in concert with BCACCS ELCC Community Facilitators to support the development of new forms of First Nations ELCC from the ground up both within existing First Nations ELCC programs and within communities that have had no ELCC in the past.
The FNPN constitutes an example of the partnerships and initiatives that BCACCS leads in British Columbia and beyond, in advocacy and support of Indigenous early learning and child care.
KAREN ISAAC, the executive director for the BC Aboriginal Child Care Society (BCACCS), is Mi’kmaq from the Gaspé region of Quebec. She is also a proud mom and Nukumi to two granddaughters. Karen has over 25 years of experience working with Aboriginal organizations at national and provincial levels. For the past 17 years she has worked with BCACCS and has been involved in Indigenous child care and children’s issues. As an advocate for a comprehensive and integrated early learning and child care system for First Nations in BC based on cultural values, knowledge and language, Karen represents BCACCS on various provincial and national policy tables.
