Announcing Our Featured Guests for A Time to Shine: Pulitzer-Prize-Winning Author Andrea Elliott and Dasani Coates

Over the years, we’ve featured some prominent guest speakers at our annual benefit, A Time to Shine—from actors Dulé Hill, Tia Mowry, and Gabrielle Union; to TV personalities Maria from Sesame Street and Tamron Hall; to former presidential advisor Valerie Jarrett, strategist Donna Brazile, and First Lady Michelle Obama. 

We’re honored to announce our featured guests for this year’s event on October 10, Pulitzer-prize winning author Andrea Elliott and Dasani Coates, whose story is told in the gripping bestseller, Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival, and Hope in an American City. 

For eight years, Andrea Elliott follows Dasani Coates, along with her parents and seven siblings, starting when Dasani is just 11 years old and living in a squalid shelter in New York City. Through Dasani’s story, readers see the world through the eyes of society’s most vulnerable—children—and witness the cost of inequality and the power of resilience.  

As the book illustrates, many challenges within the economic, social, and legislative systems designed to support Dasani’s family, as well as others like hers, persist in Illinois and in systems nationwide.  

As an organization, we first began addressing these issues in 2005, and over the past 19 years, our systems-change work has evolved and expanded. Today, Illinois Action for Children is a highly respected leader in the field—identifying issues and gaps, testing solutions, and providing targeted supports for parents, families, and communities. 

Below are three understandings that continue to guide our work. 

1. We recognize the importance of education as leverage out of difficult circumstances.

In a series of New York Times articles that inspired her book, Andrea Elliott describes how public institutions have an immense influence on the destiny of children like Dasani, especially in the absence of a steady home or a reliable parent.   

“Whether she can transcend her circumstances rests greatly on the role, however big or small, that society opts to play in her life,” Andrea writes. “For children like Dasani, school is not just a place to cultivate a hungry mind. It is a refuge. The right school can provide routine, nourishment and the guiding hand of responsible adults.” 

Research over the last few decades has dispelled the perception of child care as simply babysitting. Because children’s brain development during their first five years has an indelible impact on their lives, this shapes how we work with families, educators, and care providers to ensure all children receive a strong foundation.  

Many challenges within the economic, social, and legislative systems designed to support Dasani’s family, as well as others like hers, persist in Illinois and in systems nationwide.

In addition to serving as Illinois’ largest Child Care Resource and Referral (CCR&R) provider and facilitating the Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP), IAFC runs four of its own early learning centers, provides early childhood mental health consultations to care providers and programs, and operates the Healthy Food Program so children can receive nutritious meals and snacks at school, home, or center-based early learning programs.  

We advocate for legislation to increase access to child care, to create additional enrollment slots for children throughout the state, and to invest in compensation and professional development for the early childhood workforce. Plus, we support early childhood educators seeking to advance their careers, ensuring they are equipped to provide the best education to our youngest learners. 

2. We understand the necessity of supporting parents. 

Dasani’s mother and father (Chanel and Supreme) struggle to make ends meet, and are battling frequent unemployment, trauma, arrests, and drug addiction. Even when they make steps towards the stability they and their children desire, they discover how fractured systems can still fail families. 

At one point in the book, Dasani’s school principal observes that for a family to truly thrive, “…parents would be more than monitored. They would be given material help to fight housing instability, unemployment, food scarcity, segregated schools, and other afflictions common to the poor. Rarely does this happen.” 

Parental goals like steady employment and family stability fall apart in the absence of affordable, accessible child care programs and resources. Likewise, children’s learning during the most crucial years of their brain development must be nurtured by attuned and supportive caregivers. 

Earlier this year, we conducted an eye-opening parent survey with the RAPID Survey Project and the Stanford Center on Early Childhood to understand the experiences of Cook County parents accessing child care. Moreover, from connecting with parents through our Head Start and Early Head Start programs, to providing Family Engagement Specialists at our learning centers, to hosting programs such as Parent University, IAFC proactively addresses the issues that matter to parents and families. We even introduced a pilot program, Strengthening Connections, for children with jailed or incarcerated parents—identified by the Illinois Learning Council as a priority population.  

3. We advocate for legislation that views residents as people—not simply subjects of policy. 

According to Andrea Elliott’s reporting, the United States has the highest child poverty rate of any developed nation except for Romania, with one in five American children living in poverty. 

Parental goals like steady employment and family stability fall apart in the absence of affordable, accessible child care programs and resources.

When Andrea first meets Dasani, Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration has purposed to revamp New York’s shelter system, “creating 7,500 units of temporary housing, a database to track the shelter population, and a program intended to prevent homelessness with counseling, job training and short-term financial aid.”  However, Andrea observes—the new system also made it harder for families to be found eligible for shelter. 

“For a time, the numbers went down. But in the wake of profound policy changes and a spiraling economy, more children wound up in shelters than at any time since the creation of the shelter system in the early 1980s,” Andrea writes. 

“Decades of research have shown the staggering societal costs of children in poverty. They grow up with less education and lower earning power. They are more likely to have drug addiction, psychological trauma and disease, or wind up in prison.” 

Dasani’s home life exposes her to all of these plights, while homelessness threatens her ability to overcome them in the future. 

Her story further illustrates the dire outcomes that can occur when policies that are intended to solve social problems fail due to shortsightedness, bureaucracy, or the lack of a coordinated system that truly understands the needs of individuals. 

IAFC began as an advocacy organization, and for 55 years we have pursued early childhood legislation that puts children and families at the center. Now, with the newly established Department of Early Childhood, we are hopeful that the consolidation of services from the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE), the Department of Human Services (IDHS), and the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) will make it easier for families to access the resources they need and close many of the loopholes that have contributed to inequities.  

Now more than ever, we play a leading role in shaping an early childhood system that serves everyone by providing the highest quality, most affordable and accessible programs and resources. Learn how you can partner with us and show your support. 

Save the date—October 10—and join us for A Time to Shine. Don’t miss your chance to hear directly from Andrea Elliott and Dasani Coates today, as an adult. And learn how you can play a role in championing children and changing lives.