Camp Courant
The Camp Courant Early Learning Program provides group and one on one instruction for the most at-risk 5-8 year old’s. At the start of the camp season, the Director of Early Learning completes an assessment with each child in this age cohort. The tool assesses for numeracy, literacy and social-emotional skills. The 80 children who are identified as needing support in these areas, receive group and one on one supports during the six week camp season.

Child Care for Connecticut’s Future (CCFCT)
CCFCT is a statewide movement that envisions an early childcare education system of high-quality, equity, and financial stability. Our coalition of nearly 100 organizations includes a broad and diverse membership of parent and community groups, family and center-based providers, provider networks, unions, early childhood councils, businesses and business associations, funders, and advocacy groups.

Combatting Chronic Absenteeism in Preschool
Aligned with the Consolidated School District of New Britain’s K-12 chronic absenteeism program, this project is a comprehensive approach to decreasing chronic absenteeism in preschool students.

Compass Youth Collaborative
COMPASS Youth Collaborative (COMPASS) connects with high-risk youth wherever they are in the city of Hartford. We engage them in relationships and provide support and opportunities that help them become ready, willing, and able to succeed in education, employment, and life. The young people we serve are those that others may have given up on: with histories of violence, court involvement, association with negative peer groups, and other risk factors.

Connecticut Network for Children and Youth
The Connecticut Network for Children and Youth provides support, training and technical assistance to build programmatic knowledge and skills about SEL and trauma-informed practice.

Connecticut Children’s Collective
The CT Children’s Collective is an initiative of the CT Network for Children and Youth formed in late 2018 to develop three components of a statewide early childhood system: formalizing a network of local partnership; creating a statewide intermediary management agency; and designing supports for the local partnership within the Office of Early Childhood and other child serving government agencies. The collective was created through the efforts of the CT Early Childhood Funders Collaborative as a strategy to better connect the town based local early childhood collaboratives with the Office of Early Childhood (OEC). They serve as an intermediary that focuses on technical assistance for local collaboratives, sharing of best practices in collaborative approaches, statewide data collection and dissemination about the importance of these local entities, advocacy on behalf of the communities and their work and clearer and more efficient communication between the OEC and local towns.

Connecticut Early Childhood Funders Collaborative
CT Early Childhood Funder Collaborative (ECFC) provides resources, both financial and intellectual, to help support the development and implementation of a comprehensive early childhood system in Connecticut.

Connecticut Voices for Children
Provides trusted, quality research to improve the well-being of Connecticut’s children and families, specifically those that have been historically disadvantaged.

Connecticut Radio Information Systems
The goal of CRISKids is to enhance knowledge and improve literacy for children who have visual, learning, physical, emotional or intellectual disabilities, or who are not reading at grade level.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEi) Support Project (coordinated by the YWCA New Britain)
This work was selected as a best practice area to embed into a cohort of community-based organizations since changing demographics dictate the importance to recruit, retain and manage a diverse workforce that reflect the constituencies and communities the organizations involved serve.

Hartford Performs
Hartford Performs was created with the support of the school system to foster student achievement in literacy and the 21st century skills they will need to thrive in both school and career. Hartford Performs is intended to be the district’s mechanism to ensure that all students have equal access to consistently high-quality arts offerings as part of their education. Their arts-integration programs reach students who are otherwise not engaged, and benefit all students by enhancing the critical and creative thinking processes that are required to understand, apply, and demonstrate learning in all subject areas.

Key Initiatives to Education (KITE)
KITE is a community collaborative dedicated to enhancing health, family engagement & support, and early care & education to Enfield’s youngest residents. KITE is supported by a variety of public and private community partners, who share the vision to ensure that Enfield’s children are healthy, safe and happy; live in thriving families; and are ready to learn the skills they need to succeed in school and flourish in the 21st century.

Literacy Volunteers of Central Connecticut
Talk to Tots is a program for parents that uses regular feedback from LENA technology to help increase interactive talk in order to close the early-talk gap, support kindergarten readiness, and build stronger families.

Middlesex Health
Middlesex Health re-launched its preschool mental health services utilizing a licensed mental health consultant (MHC) to provide support for parents, educators, and children in managing disruptive behaviors in the preschool setting. The primary goal of the program is to reduce out-of-school discipline (OSD) to zero incidents per year for the 450 children attending School Readiness (SR) preschools in Middletown.

New Britain Summer Learning Experiences
Now in the eighth year of programming, SEE began as an innovative idea to better engage student’s kindergarten through grades 3 in summer school. Targeting students performing in the lowest 20th percentile on standardized tests, SEE addresses the State Department of Education mandated summer school. Prior to SEE’s implementation, the District used a traditional classroom approach with less than adequate results. Switching to a community partnership model that aligns Community Based Organization programs to classroom curriculums SEE changed everything. In 2016, SEE received the prestigious New York Life Foundation Excellence Award through the National Summer Learning Association for excellence in accelerating academic achievement and helping students avoid summer learning loss. This success prompted the expansion to include students through middle school. The New Britain Summer Learning Experiences (NBSLE) are comprised of three separate age appropriate programs. The Summer Enrichment Experience (SEE) is the oldest and serves student from kindergarten through grade three, the CREATE program serving students in grades four and five (this is the first summer) and XTREME serving students in grades six through eight (this is the second summer).

Odd Fellows Playhouse
Oddbridge supports low and moderate income students to achieve greater success. Students will engage in arts & resilience-building programming.

Prudence Crandall Center
Prudence Crandall Center (PCC) provides comprehensive services to adults and children affected by domestic violence, as well as prevention, education, and outreach services to Central Connecticut communities.

Read to Grow
The Books for Babies (BFB) program provides new board books to over 58% of all newborns in the state and early literacy guides to their parents/caregivers through hospital partners.

Supporting Community Organizing Work (SOW)
SOW grows out of the recognition that strong, effective organizing work – in any region and on any issue area—requires capacity and infrastructure for the organizing field that cuts across the boundaries of specific constituencies, geographic regions, and issue silos. While individual foundations may have limitations and barriers that prevent them from addressing these intersectional, statewide needs, there is the potential to address them collectively and collaboratively.

The Bridge Family Resource Center
The Parent and Caregiver Education project consists of three classes: Circle of Security Parenting (focusing on the emotional needs of the child that drive behavior); Positive Discipline (focusing on how to teach children important life skills and positive ways of behaving based on self-discipline); and Pizza and Parenting (a lunch-time experience during which parents and presenters discuss various aspects of child raising).

United Way of Central and Northeastern CT
United Way Readers matches caring, adult volunteer readers with two students for an academic year to support children struggling to read on grade-level. Reading on grade-level is a key indicator for graduating high school on time prepared for college or career, increasing a child’s opportunity for future success. The program is coordinated by a partnership between United Way, teachers, the school and the school district leadership and is intended to complement the school district’s literacy strategies by providing individualized attention beyond what the schools can provide. As the volunteer and students’ relationship develops, we see volunteers starting to read more books connected to the interests of students and students come to see that reading is a big part of accomplishing their hopes and dreams.

Women’s Business Development Corporation
WBDC offers a comprehensive suite of business development services to help home- and center-based child care providers across Connecticut launch, sustain, and grow their businesses. These no cost services include industry-specific training, advising, and technical assistance to support clients in setting and achieving business goals and accessing capital.

YWCA New Britain
The Childcare Business Incubator is a pilot project approved for operation by the Connecticut Office of Early Childhood in 2021. New Britain is one of seven communities approved for developing this concept; and the first Connecticut community to bring this model to fruition. The Childcare Business Incubator Model melds a supportive business model with an intensive training/mentoring early learning education project for family daycare providers. The YWCA is partnering with The New Britain Housing Authority to use their Center of Excellence adjacent to Mount Pleasant Housing Complex as its location. The Incubator will have four family daycare businesses co­ located in one building each with their own individual space, in addition to shared space (a playground and a gross motor room) while offering supportive administrative services (like accounting) needed to sustain a business. A cohort of 10 women will participate in a four-month training program that includes early childhood practice and business and childcare operations. From this cohort, the four providers most ready to operate will be selected for Incubator operators. The balance of the class will be supported for several months to assist their development of a personal business or to transition to a staffing position in an early childhood facility.

Trauma-Informed Practice Fund Grants

  • Charter Oak Cultural Center
  • Unashamed
  • Camp Courant
  • Community First School