For Half a Century

The Voice of Early Childhood Education

First Up’s best-in-class training, effective advocacy, and accessible technical assistance give educators and advocates the specialized tools they need to transform lives.

First Up’s best-in-class training, accessible technical assistance, and effective advocacy give educators and advocates the specialized tools they need to transform lives.

Our name, First Up, confidently embodies our core commitment to early educators. It asserts that those first relationships that children develop with family, caregivers, and early childhood professionals are crucial in creating a path forward to success. While our name may have changed over the years, we remain dedicated to our mission of ensuring educational opportunity for every child in our community.

What We Do

Impacting Professionals

First Up offers an exceptional array of workshops, leading-edge conferences, and programs of the highest quality to help ECE Professionals achieve best practice.

Impacting Programs

Technical assistance may take many forms, including mentoring, coaching, demonstrating, and one-on-one consulting. Our experienced staff works closely with each organization to develop an individualized service plan that outlines goals and objectives aimed at achieving a specified knowledge area, STAR performance standard, advanced STAR level or national accreditation standard.

Impacting Systems

At the heart of First Up is our deep desire and commitment to effect change on a larger scale, because every child deserves equal opportunities for healthy development and quality education.