Pennsylvania’s children are in trouble. Across the state nearly a half million children face the same troubling circumstances.

We know that good health care, education and enrichment treat the wounds to a child’s development caused by poverty.

Research tells us that ensuring the safety and nurturing the intellect, creativity, and self-confidence of children raised in poverty, is difficult and requires extra resources and efforts to succeed.

In Pennsylvania, these children suffer because lawmakers fail to invest sufficient resources or support the specific policies to meet their needs.

Tens of thousands of children are uninsured, alarmingly growing up without regular access to health care.

The vast majority of low income children attend schools that have far less resources available for their education than their well-off peers.

And far less than half of the at-risk young children in the Commonwealth have access to the benefits of high quality early learning programs that are proven to boost their educational and lifetime chances of success.

That’s why the Children First Action Fund exists.

Our goal is to ensure elected officials make the right investments of public resources so that children burdened by poverty and adversity have the best chance of reaching their full potential.

The Children First Action Fund is governed by a board of bi-partisan volunteers focused on raising funds to support lobbying efforts for improved access to high quality educational opportunities, especially for our poorest children and to let citizens know when their elected officials are making that possible, and when they are not.