In 1897 when Alice McLellan Birney and Phoebe Apperson Hearst decided that someone should speak out on behalf of children, they founded the National Congress of Mothers which later became PTA. For more than 125 years, PTA advocacy has resulted in many changes such as creation of kindergarten classes, child labor laws, public health service, juvenile justice system, mandatory immunization, and the school lunch program. Today, PTA continues to advocate for all children, to press for adequate, equitable, and sustainable school funding, to create safe and healthy communities, and to make every child’s potential a reality. Become an advocate at the Local PTA or by joining Louisiana PTA and National PTA to add your voice to PTA’s one voice for every child. Advocacy is what makes PTA different from other parent groups. Each of us desires the best for our children. Reaching out to other children ensures that all children benefit from our efforts. Creating communities that are child friendly places promotes their health and wellbeing where they can prosper. Why Advocate? It is probably safe to say that no one first joins PTA to be an advocate. Most initially go to meetings and share their thoughts when the principal asks for ideas on an issue the school is facing. They help run an activity booth at the fall carnival to help raise funds to purchase items that teachers need in their classrooms. They talk to the child’s teacher when another child was bullying them. They work a shift or two at the book fair because the school library would get extra books after the sale. They do these things because they want the child’s school to provide the best education possible. And in doing all these things, they were involved in advocacy, because at the most basic level, advocacy is simply working to make things better. Sometimes that involves speaking to someone with the power to make a change. Sometimes it is raising funds to support that change. By talking to the child’s teacher about a problem in the classroom, they already know the basics of advocacy. Talk to the person who can change the situation, share what the problem is, and ask them to fix it (possibly with the solution). The approach is the same when advocating with a school board member, a state legislator, or a member of Congress. The LAPTA Toolkit: Advocacy is designed to help the PTA become a more effective advocate, whether that advocacy is in the school, in the district, or at the state or national level. It will help to strategically attack an issue, recruit supporters, build coalitions of like-minded groups, structure the arguments, and communicate effectively. It will help to engage the PTA’s members in advocacy and teach how to take advocacy success from the local level to the state or national level. PTA was founded on the idea of advocating for children at school, in the home, and in their community. The Local PTA Unit has already been involved in advocacy, even if they did not call it that. Now, they can strengthen that advocacy. When PTAs advocate for change, they make things better not just for their child right now, but for every child going forward.