our advocacy partners

As an active steering committee member of Outdoors Alliance for Kids (OAK), a coalition of more than 100 organizations, Alliance for Childhood is the national voice for child-directed, intrinsically motivated, active, open-ended, and freely chosen play outdoors. OAK is a national strategic partnership of organizations from diverse sectors with a common interest in connecting children, youth and families with the outdoors.

Alliance for Childhood serves on the steering committee of US Play Coalition, an organization with a diverse membership including educators, parents, physicians, health scientists, park and recreation professionals, psychologists, landscape architects and many more. The US Play Coalition is a partnership to promote the value of play throughout life - an international network of individuals and organizations that recognize play as a valuable and necessary part of a healthy and productive life.

International Alliance for Childhood Organizations

Alliance for Childhood participates regularly in video conference discussions with our international Alliance for Childhood partner organizations - keeping current with global concerns around the healthy development of children. This exchange of information, research and experience helps build a shared picture of issues impacting children world wide.

Founding Partners

In February 1999 at Sunbridge College, Spring Valley, NY, nearly 30 teachers, medical professionals, university professors, child advocates, and parents agreed to join together and boldly take up concerns and issues affecting the lives of children throughout the world. They would work together as partners, they decided, in forging a broad new international coalition to challenge the rush to end childhood. This event, sponsored by The Center for the Study of the Spiritual Foundations of Education at Teachers College, Columbia University and funded by the Fetzer Institute, marked the beginning of the Alliance for Childhood.