Creating impact with your investment

As a leadership giver, you are an integral part of our ability to create real and lasting change in this community. This column is designed to show you just how much of a difference you are making with your leadership gift. We’ll examine a specific program and the impact that various levels of leadership giving can have on its ability to improve our region.

The first program we’re examining is the Early Learning Communities (ELC). This program falls under our work in education and focuses on children ages 0-5. We know that 90 percent of the brain develops in the first three years of life. We believe that by ensuring children develop properly during that time, we can actually stem many of the negative issues they could face later in life, such as truancy, crime and poverty.

The ELCs meet this goal by training caregivers through neighborhood-based hubs, or "communities". Caregivers in our region are often not equipped to provide the quality early learning that children in this age group need. Through the ELCs we hope to correct this issue and help more of our children succeed in school and in life.

Your leadership gift is helping us make strides.

Reaching the community with a gift of $1,000
Before officially launching an Early Learning Community, we host a community event in the neighborhood where our ELC will be. It's an opportunity for parents and caregivers to learn more about the ELCs and sign up for the programming offered. These events are critical because they serve as an initial connection with caregivers in a specific neighborhood.

A gift of $1,000 allows us to put on a community event and spread the word about the ELC. We are able to reach people at the neighborhood level and interact with them individually to answer questions and encourage participation.

Providing necessary tools with a gift of $5,000
Once we’ve populated an Early Learning Community with caregivers, we begin providing them with basic tools to make small improvements in the care they offer. To do this, every ELC has a lending library of resources for caregivers.

One lending library requires an investment of $5,000. With that contribution, we are able to provide age-appropriate books, educational toys and games, and handbooks to help caregivers improve.

Fostering change with a gift of $10,000
The main components at each Early Learning Community are free workshops designed to train caregivers so that they can help the young children they watch develop properly. These small group sessions cover topics such as active learning, health and safety, and conflict resolution.

To conduct a year of training at the four ELCs we currently operate requires an investment of $10,000. That contribution allows us to hire a trainer who provides quality training to 60 caregivers at each site over the course of a year. We anticipate that the training these caregivers receive will impact 240 children since many caregivers will care for several children in their lifetime. With training, caregivers are better equipped to provide quality early learning opportunities to children so they can enter Kindergarten ready for success.

Long-term results with a gift of $50,000
In addition to the small group workshops, our Early Learning Communities are beginning to offer opportunities for each caregiver to receive micro-coaching. This entails an individualized plan for improvement, overseen by an ELC trainer who works one-on-one with a caregiver to delve deeper into specific problem areas. One micro-coaching session lasts three months and caregivers can participate in as many as four sessions a year.

To bring micro-coaching to one ELC requires an investment of $50,000. This individualized approach is critical to creating long-term change because it helps caregivers permanently improve the care they offer by creating an environment in the home that fosters growth and development. While the workshops teach critical skills, micro-coaching ensures those skills are being implemented to create the best outcome for the children affected.

Your gift is making a difference, and we thank you for all you do to help us create a lasting solution to the issue of quality child care in our region. If you are ever interested in seeing your dollars at work in the ELC or any of our programs, please contact Doug Ferrick.

Doing our part to promote Detroit

We’re all a bit tired at United Way these days, but it's the good kind of tired. The kind of tired you feel after seeing a job well done or a lofty goal met. After all, we just hosted 1,300 colleagues from around the world for United Way of America’s Staff Leaders Conference (SLC) held in Detroit, May 12-15. A job well done, indeed.

Detroit was the shining star as conference-goers sat in on sessions at Cobo Hall, attended receptions at the Renaissance Center, and uncovered nightlife in Greektown.

We were sad to see our fellow colleagues leave, but so happy that they each took a few days out of their busy schedules to join us in our hometown for this annual conference. The SLC provides an important opportunity to network and share best practices and it is much anticipated each year. In addition to the usual conference fare, this year's participants also heard inspiring words from a variety of keynote speakers, including Dolly Parton, founder of an early literacy program known as Imagination Library, and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

It's fitting that United Way of America chose Detroit to host this year’s event, especially at such a critical time in our city’s history. Our region is at the epicenter of the economic issues facing the entire country, and it offered an appropriate location for staff from across the country to discuss how we bring our respective communities out of this downturn stronger than they were before.

To properly host an event of this size, we had to enlist the help of over 300 volunteers, and we are eternally grateful for the added manpower they brought. Whether they stuffed gift bags or welcomed attendees at the airport and hotel, our volunteers showed off the true spirit of Detroit.

So, while we are quite tired, it’s time to get back to business. The conference provided lots of new ideas to combat the issues we face and we’re anxious to put them into practice.