The Advocate Interview: Margaret Blood
The Advocate, June 2008

Long-time child advocate Margaret Blood is at the center of a campaign to make high-quality early childhood education available to all young children in Massachusetts. The Advocate recently sat down with Margaret to talk about her work with teachers and kids, both here in the Commonwealth and in Guatemala where she now works with several schools.

Advocate: I just found out that you volunteer at the Tobin School once a week—tell me more.
Blood: For 8 years I've been helping out with Ruth Cohen's kindergarten class at the Tobin in Mission Hill. But I've actually been involved with the school for 25 years. It's hard to believe it's been that long!

Advocate: How did you find your way to the Tobin in the first place?
Blood: I've always worked with kids. I grew up in New Jersey and I started out as a tutor for inner city kids. I ended up working as a community organizer in Mission Hill in the early 1980's and I co-founded a summer camp for 120 kids in the neighborhood called Mission Possible. That's when my relationship with the Tobin School began.

Advocate: You're best known for your advocacy work on Beacon Hill. How did you go from starting a summer camp to the Statehouse?
Blood: From my work in Mission Hill I went to work as an aid for a state rep, Kevin Fitzgerald. He was a teacher by training. I worked with him for ten years and together we founded the Legislative Children's Caucus at the Statehouse and began to try to document the needs of children and start to educate legislators on issues like childhood hunger and the impact that the lack of health insurance has on kids.

Advocate: Have children's issues become more of a priority since you began your efforts?
Blood: Definitely. I think that our advocacy efforts on behalf of children, particularly young children, have been bolstered by the growing amount of economic evidence that when you invest in very young children all of society benefits. It's also made a big difference having more women elected to office and having younger legislative leaders who are more involved in childrearing. And then what's been really interesting is to see a generation of older men who are grandfathers, like Mayor Menino, who are really close to their grandkids. The advocacy is also a lot more sophisticated. Advocates for children have figured out how to make use of the Internet, media, polling. I'm heartened by it.

Advocate: And yet you say you're not all that hopeful when you look ahead.
Blood: I'm really concerned about the state of the economy. I see these collisions: the aging population, the out-of-control health care costs and the state of our economy, and they're not aligning in a way that's painting a very hopeful future for children. It sounds like such a cliché to say that children can't vote but it's a reality. When policy makers are looking at the budget it matters that children don't vote and they don't write campaign checks.

Advocate: When you look at the financial pressures that are affecting our cities and towns, on the one side you have the interest of children and on the other, the taxpayers. It almost seems like they're being put in opposition.
Blood: Look, I understand the pressures that families are feeling on their pocketbooks. I was out of the country for nine weeks and I came back and I couldn't believe how much more expensive everything was, from gas to the movies to groceries, you name it. That's frightening to people because wages aren't keeping up. Although for the very wealthy I don't think there's been any impact. My frustration is in how we set priorities in the government and in society.

Advocate: The group you founded, Strategies for Children, has really led the way as far as fighting for universal pre-kindergarten in Massachusetts. What's your next goal?
Blood: At a legislative level we're working to get the Universal Pre-K program more formally established in statute. Former Governor Romney vetoed it last time around, Governor Patrick has pledged to sign the legislation. I'd also like to find a way to improve the kind of support that teachers get. They don't get nearly enough reinforcement and that really concerns me. Without a top quality education system our country is in such peril.

Advocate: You’re efforts are mostly concentrated here in Massachusetts buy you’ve recently gotten very involved in Guatemala – tell us more.
Blood: A friend of mine from church was in Guatemala near Lake Atitlan and I went down to visit her and fell in love with the place. I started volunteering at a school, then I took it to the next level and founded a nonprofit called Mil Milagros, which means 1,000 Miracles. We’re doing school-based nutrition, health and hygiene at two schools.

Advocate: With the help of some teachers in Boston, I understand.
Blood: It's really been remarkable how much support I've gotten from teachers. We're serving almost 200 children a day with a hot meal, tooth brushing, hand washing and lice treatment. Several teachers in Boston have helped to raise money and collect books. After bilingual education was outlawed in Massachusetts we were throwing away books, and teachers at the Tobin School helped me save them from the garbage and send them to Guatemala. My dream now is that my kids in Guatemala will have sneakers—it's a serious problem; they don't have shoes.

Margaret Blood is the founder and president of Strategies for Children, an advocacy group for children with headquarters in Boston. To learn more about the organization visit www.strategiesforchildren.org