Young voices. Lived experience. Big ideas. And one afternoon that reminded us why the people navigating New Hampshire’s challenges should have a hand in designing what comes next.

There’s a reason we called it NH Nexus.

A nexus is where things connect—and on August 10, that’s exactly what happened.

Young professionals met early childhood partners. Parents shared experiences with policymakers and community leaders. Business leaders heard firsthand how care impacts careers and mobility. Advocates challenged us to think differently about equity and access. And throughout the afternoon, attendees added their own ideas, questions, and—thanks to one particularly fun networking exercise—some new vocabulary to the walls of Arts Alley!

NH Nexus was presented by Northeast Delta Dental and supported by the Couch Family Foundation, bringing together young people and leaders from across New Hampshire to examine one issue that touches nearly every part of our future: early care and education.

Young People Belong at the Table

At Stay Work Play, we spend a lot of time asking young people what makes New Hampshire a place they can—and want to—build a life.

Affordability. Careers. Housing. Community. Belonging. Family.

Those issues don’t exist independently of one another.

That’s the idea behind NH Nexus: each year, we’ll take one timely issue affecting New Hampshire’s ability to attract and retain young people, dig into its complexity, and intentionally bring young people into the conversation. From the beginning.

The lived experience of being a young person in NH is valuable and worthy of inclusion when designing better systems.

This year, we started with early care and education.

Whether you’re a parent or not, access to childcare influences the communities and workplaces around you. It determines whether colleagues can come to work, whether businesses can retain talent, whether families can afford to stay here, and whether children have access to the support they need early enough to excel in the 603 long term.

Our question for the afternoon wasn’t simply, “What’s wrong with childcare?”

It was: What could we build if we approached it differently?

First, We Listened

Our first conversation, Living the Reality: Young Families Navigating Childcare in New Hampshire, put lived experience front and center.

Young parents shared the different ways they’re making care work: traditional childcare centers, grandparents and family networks, flexible work schedules, creative arrangements, and navigating a system that can become even more complicated when a child requires additional individualized support.

Different families. Different circumstances. But a remarkably similar reality: making childcare work requires an extraordinary amount of money, flexibility, coordination, and what we found out - a healthy dose of luck.

And those roadblocks ripple outward.

Childcare can influence whether someone accepts a promotion, reduces their hours, changes jobs, grows their family, or ultimately decides whether New Hampshire is a sustainable place to stay.

Then, We Looked at the System

The second panel, Equalizing the System: Leveling Barriers for Community Health, widened the lens.

We know that creating more childcare spaces isn’t enough if families can’t afford them, providers can’t sustainably operate them, educators can’t afford to build careers within them, or children who require additional support or circumstance cannot meaningfully access them.

The conversation explored early care and education as a community health and equity issue, including the ways geography, income, disability, identity, workforce capacity, and access to resources shape a family’s experience.

One theme kept surfacing:

We cannot strengthen childcare without strengthening the people who provide it and if the most vulnerable populations within our communities cannot access it.

Early childhood professionals perform skilled, demanding, deeply consequential work. Building the system New Hampshire needs means investing in compensation, professional development, career pathways, staffing, and the resources educators need to serve children with a wide range of needs.

And we learned that different communities need different access points and services. When one family is left out, its a failure of the system.

And Then We Talked About What’s Possible

We intentionally designed the final panel of the day to feel different.

After spending the afternoon understanding the challenge, Building What’s Next: Innovation & Community Solutions focused on hope, progress, and innovation currently being spearheaded throughout the state.

We heard about new approaches already being brought online across the state—from new workforce pathways into early childhood education to shared infrastructure designed to help rural childcare providers spend less time managing administrative functions and more time focused on children and families.

We also explored the role storytelling and media can play in changing how communities understand an issue, elevating lived experience, and building the public awareness needed to create momentum.

The takeaway is that people and partners are trying new tactics, strategies, and partnerships to close the gap.

Through this lens, our partners are proving that the system we have today does not have to be the system we inherit tomorrow.

Also: You All Had Some Ideas

Between panels, we gave attendees prompts designed to get them moving, talking, and thinking creatively.

Attendees taught each other generational slang words, personal life hacks, and random pieces of knowledge that set the standard for a different type of networking, reflective of the type of vulnerability, empathy, and generational collaboration needed to build the future of childcare in NH.

The walls quickly filled. Some ideas were ambitious. Some were incredibly practical. Some made us laugh (did you know that brown bears and grizzly bears are one in the same??), and some made us wonder why we aren’t already doing them.

That was intentional. Systems change needs expertise and policy knowledge. But it also needs imagination.

BET - shout out to our Gen Zers in the audience who educated me in generational lingo. And yes, my use of ‘lingo’ definitely dates me.

So, Where Do We Go From Here?

NH Nexus ended. The work didn’t. In fact, this is where the interesting part begins.

Everything we heard—from the stage, around the tables, and on those walls—helps inform how Stay Work Play continues bringing young people into the issues shaping New Hampshire.

And we know where some of those conversations are heading next!

Queue Biennium planning, Policy Priorities and new programming!

Next Stop: Policy & Pizza 🍕

We’re taking the conversation directly to New Hampshire’s next generation through Policy & Pizza, our campus-based listening series.

Policy & Pizza creates intimate spaces for college and post-secondary students to talk about the issues affecting their lives and futures—without requiring them to walk in knowing anything about public policy.

We bring the pizza. They bring the opinions. We listen. We adapt!

The insights gathered through these conversations help us better understand what younger Granite Staters are experiencing, what they care about, and what they need from the state they may soon decide whether to call home.

Then: Back to the State House

The next legislative session will be here before we know it. And the conversations from NH Nexus will travel with us.

Stay Work Play approaches advocacy through the lens of attraction and retention: What does New Hampshire need to become a place where young people can—and want to—build their lives?

Early care and education is a critical piece of that work alongside housing, affordability, workforce and education, thriving communities, and the other interconnected issues shaping quality of life.

As lawmakers return to session, we’ll continue advocating for policies that make New Hampshire more accessible and sustainable for the next generation—and creating ways for young people to understand what’s happening under the dome and use their voices.

We believe that your relationship with public policy shouldn’t begin when someone asks for your vote.

It begins when you realize the decisions being made affect your everyday life.

This Is the Nexus

NH Nexus gave us an afternoon to connect dots.

Between childcare and workforce.
Between equity and community health.
Between lived experience and policy.
Between young people and the institutions shaping their futures.
Between problems and possibility.

But the most important nexus is far more powerful than an event. It’s people.

It’s what happens when someone hears a story that changes their perspective.
When a young leader brings an idea back to work.
When a student realizes public policy actually has something to do with them.
When someone decides to join a board, contact a legislator, advocate for their colleagues, eventually run for office, or simply VOTE.
When someone who thought, “I’m not an expert in this,” realizes:
Maybe my perspective is exactly why I should be part of the conversation.

That’s what we’re building. And we’re just getting started.

Keep the Momentum Going:

→ LEARN MORE ABOUT POLICY & PIZZA, KICKING OFF THIS FALL

→ FOLLOW STAY WORK PLAY’S ADVOCACY WORK

→ GET TICKETS TO THE 2026 RISING STARS AWARDS ON OCTOBER 8

→ APPLY FOR THE 2027 RISING STARS LEADERSHIP PROGRAM

NH Nexus was presented by Northeast Delta Dental and supported by the Couch Family Foundation.

Thank you to our sponsors, panelists, moderators, partners, and every person who showed up ready to listen, contribute, and imagine what New Hampshire could become.

NH Nexus Was the Beginning: What We Heard, What We’re Taking With Us, and What Comes Next