All About Me: a unit about self-love and expression
At YWCA Lancaster's YWonderful Kids Child Enrichment Program, we strive to not only provide quality, affordable childcare for our community, but to prepare the next generation to lead, grow, and thrive! Unfortunately, as data like our Racial Equity Profile of Lancaster County show us, representation of teachers and authority figures for children of color is disproportionately low across our county.As part of the work to address this, YWCA Lancaster's Olivia Krause introduced an "All About Me" unit for our students utilizing our award-winning anti-bias curriculum. In addition to units focusing on love, diversity, family, friendship, and identity, community members from different spheres and sectors have been visiting our kiddos to impart wisdom, share their talents, and inspire creativity. Throughout the month, students have heard from local creatives such as Ashley Velez, Mariah Burke, Kearasten Jordan and more, as well as local leaders from our own team. In connecting our students with local, inspiring community members, YWonderful Kids is working to 
From Ms. Olivia:
The ‘why’ behind the unit ‘All About Me’ is to empower our students. It is important to discuss topics like identity, love, friendship, diversity, and family throughout the entire school year, but I wanted to emphasize the importance of these topics cohesively in one unit. I reached out to community members to emphasize the importance of representation. It means so much to our students to hear from adults in our community that our students might aspire to be like one day. My hope is that this unit will be a memory that our students will remember and reflect on when they are older.We want our students to feel heard, seen, loved, and valued by addressing topics that would relate to them most.
At YWCA Lancaster's YWonderful Kids Program, we believe a just future begins with empowering the next generation to promote peace, justice, freedom, and dignity for all.
Join us this summer or next school year to be part of our YWonderful Kids family!