By Jenny Miller | Executive Director, The Steve Nash Foundation
Educare Arizona entered its third full school year this past autumn, with 183 students - 16 (thriving) infants, 48 toddlers, and 119 preschool children. With the generous support of donors like you, we've added a Math & Science Big Building Area in the Birth to Five Courtyard. The area is used daily, for the kind of integrated science and learning that high-quality early learning offers — through creative free play and structured lessons, the blocks, arches, wheelbarrows, and chutes provide opportunities for our students to explore the ups and downs and ins and outs of their physical world. The items purchased for the permanent installation are beautifully crafted, adding natural elements to the outdoor space that is such a focus of the school.
Inside and out, Educare Arizona has continued to develop and respond to community needs. Last month, we welcomed new CEO John Scola to Educare Arizona, and are excited that he shares our passion for early childhood’s role in community building — a passion that has significant legs to stand on. A major national commission sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation recently announced their recommendations for building a healthier America — and investing more in high-quality early childhood is their first priority. What's more, the commission spotlighted the great work Educare is doing on this front: multiple references to Educare in the Commission's executive summary and full report can be found in the right-hand column of the page linked here: http://www.rwjf.org/en/research-publications/find-rwjf-research/2014/01/recommendations-from-the-rwjf-commission-to-build-a-healthier-am.html. In addition, a quick, 2-minute video the Commission produced features Educare Washington DC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9A0VuPnMf-Y. Educare’s national leadership on early childhood education has also lead to the Educare Learning Network (ELN) being asked to contribute our learning on the impact of expanding Early Head Start to promote improvement of community healthcare to meet the needs of vulnerable children (and the communities in which they live). ELN’s sedulous attention to data collection, analysis and implementation has also lead Head Start and the Department of Health and Human Services to reach out to ELN to host workshops on data utilization, to contribute to improvement of practice nationally.
All of this is a testament to all of the good work being done, at Educare Arizona, and, together, throughout the coast-to-coast network of Educare schools, and it couldn’t happen without supporters like you - thank you!
Links:
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
