Quality early child care and education
Supporting quality early learning systems and services, working to ensure children are ready to succeed in school by the age of six. Many of these initiatives change often.
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United Way Success By 6® is the nation’s largest network of early childhood coalitions, focused on improving school readiness through community change. Success by 6® raises awareness of the importance of early childhood development, increases access to services, advocates for public policies and improves systems – budgets, laws and supports – to improve young children’s lives.
More than 500,000 children nationwide have benefited from Success by 6® early learning, child care, parent education, health, literacy and family resource center programs.
Click to find out more about Born LearningTM
Professional development opportunities
KETC Channel 9’s It Only Takes One Step Toward a Healthy Mind, Body, and Soul
In St. Louis’ early childhood community, the growing epidemic of childhood obesity points to the need for healthy role modeling by the adults who care for children on a daily basis. While a child care provider’s unhealthy choices affect their own personal health, these choices are observed by and have a direct effect on the children in their care.
Through their educational services, KETC/Channel 9 reaches children, parents and educators at home, in school, and throughout the community, developing literacy and school readiness skills programs for St. Louis area’s neediest children. In August 2006, KETC partnered with the seven United Way-funded Grace Hill Head Start centers in the city of St. Louis to pilot "It Only Takes One Step to a Healthy Mind, Body and Soul." The initiative is focused on the adoption of a healthy lifestyle for child care providers and seeks to create healthy role modeling by the adults caring for children on a daily basis.
Click to download a one-page .pdf with more about "It Only Takes One Step"
Reading readiness
St. Louis County Library’s Preschool Outreach Reading Readiness Program
Reading readiness is strongly linked to family income; the lower the income, the lower the reading readiness. The typical middle-class child is read to 1,000 to 1,700 hours before entering first grade, whereas a child from a low-income family is read to an average of 25 hours. Children who start school behind, typically stay behind and there is a 90 percent probability that, if a child is a poor reader in the first grade, he or she will remain a poor reader by the end of fourth grade.
The Pre-School Outreach Reading Readiness Program partnered with the United Way’s Success By 6® initiative to prepare 150 pre-school and toddler activity kits to supplement classroom lesson themes. The multi-sensory theme kits feature topics like children of the world, weather, farm animals and letters and numbers. The contents vary according to the theme, but each kit contains a zippered kit bag, 20 to 25 theme paperbacks, a music CD or DVD and a game, toy, flannel board, group activity, puppet, etc. These kids are provided in 18 centers, representing over 60 classrooms, serving disadvantaged preschool-aged children throughout the Library’s District. The United Way provides ongoing support to early learning by investing more than $3.7 million each year in accredited child care centers throughout the region.
Click to download a one-page .pdf with more about SLCL's Preschool Outreach
Once Upon A Time…Exploring Fairy Tales Exhibition
The St. Louis Public Library partnered with the Magic House to create the Once Upon A Time…Exploring Fairy Tales Exhibition. In August of 2006, the United Way invested $30,000 to underwrite the cost of a free book to every child who visits the exhibit. The exhibit ran from Oct. 2 - Dec. 30, 2006.
Click to download a one-page .pdf with more about "Once Upon a Time"
Access to quality care
After School for All
Currently, only 1,500 St. Louis Public Schools elementary children (less than 10 percent of children ages 5-13 in St. Louis City) have access to daily after school programs. The 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. timeframe, between the end of the school day and a parent’s return home from work, is a clearly dangerous period for children. During this time, the incidents of juvenile crime, juvenile victimization by crime, and other risky behaviors skyrocket.
Mayor Francis Slay accepted a challenge from the National League of Cities to adopt an “After school For All by 2010” initiative in St. Louis. The initiative is aimed at promoting and increasing after school programming throughout the country. The United Way awarded $35,000 in support of the first year of the multi-year project. The first goal was adding 10 new programs by September 2007, serving 520 additional students. The overall goal is 5,600 new slots by 2010.
Click to download a .pdf with more about "After School for All"