Coalition to help the kids
Photo by ERIN MCCRACKEN
Tarossi Outlaw, 3, foreground, and Eve Bilderback, 5, make cards for their mothers Thursday afternoon during day care at Deaconess Children's Enrichment Center. The center is part of the Early Childhood Development Coalition that recently raised $1 million for programs to further opportunities available for children up to age 5 and their families.
Nova Conner has been involved in early childhood education for more than 20 years, and she's watched and heard as people thought it wasn't an important issue to address.
"I've been working with children for so long," said Conner, director of the Deaconess Children's Enrichment Center. "We would talk early childhood ... and so many times people were like, 'oh, they're just kids.' They just don't understand how important those years are, but we do, because we work with them everyday."
The Deaconess Children's Enrichment Center is just one of the early childhood development centers in Evansville that will benefit from the Early Childhood Development Coalition.
The coalition will address prevention, treatment and solutions of problems in early childhood development in the Tri-State.
"For somebody in the community to take this serious is like a dream come true for people in early childhood," Conner said. "We're validated. I get overwhelmed because we have fought for this for so long, and no one listened."
On Thursday, the group celebrated raising more than $1 million to address the issue.
Through a partnership of businesses, foundations and individual donors, the coalition was able to raise and meet a $500,000 matching grant from the Indiana Association of United Ways funded by the Lilly Endowment.
Carol Braden-Clarke, president of the United Way of Southwestern Indiana, said as they decided what issue to address, early childhood kept coming up.
"We are very excited and happy to be able to have these funds and really be able to address this issue of early childhood development," she said. "This whole project is just really exciting, and there are so many people involved in it. This
is truly a community effort."
The coalition is made up of more than 60 community organizations and 160 individuals
Some of community leaders present at Thursday's celebration included Mayor Jonathan Weinzapfel, Matt Meadors, president and CEO of the Chamber of Commerce of Southwest Indiana and Cathy Gray, assistant superintendent of federal program of the Evansville-Vanderburgh School Corp.
Weinzapfel said the community support shows how much they care about the city's future.
"Our objective is to bring together all the different perspectives in this community on education, early childhood education, post-secondary education, to figure out how we can work better together to improve education and make sure every child in this community has a chance to succeed," said Weinzapfel.
"By focusing on early childhood and partnering with this coalition, we want to give every child in our community the opportunity to begin school on an equal playing field and graduate from high school."
Braden-Clarke said the money raised will be used for staff members, marketing to get the word out to the community, evaluation and a family literacy component.
The coalition is divided into a number of subcommittees to address everything from parent involvement to public policy. She said programs will be started soon in the community from them.
"You will hear more and see more as we move throughout the year. There's so much more to come," Braden-Clarke said. "The possibilities of what we can accomplish as a community, I think, are endless in this area. Stay tuned because there are great things to come."
Comment: Miss Kelly and I both belong to this coalition effort.
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