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.

CT After School Network
The Connecticut After School Network provides support, training and technical assistance to build programmatic knowledge and skills about SEL and trauma-informed practice.

CT 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 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.

Free Center
Opportunity Knocks’ (OK) Social, Emotional and Behavioral Health (SEBH) developed an Early Childhood SEBH system. Within that system, the Parents of Preschoolers (POP) program supports the promotion of child health and wellbeing, increasing access to and trust in behavioral health care, increasing the capacity of families to support children, and children’s capacity to self-regulate their behavior and emotions. POP is a free monthly book reading, activities, and direct contact engaging primarily BIPOC families with “birth-5” kids in Middletown.

Hartford Data Collaborative
The Hartford Data Collaborative (HDC) is a shared data infrastructure that facilitates data sharing, integration and analysis to optimize services and outcomes for Hartford Residents. The Hartford Data Collaborative will provide the central infrastructure such that organizations and researchers interested in understanding either program effectiveness or the populations they serve will have a place to go and access the data. Once the integrated data system is in place, it will help support research and enable us to understand how clients access public services.

Hartford Parent University
Hartford Parent University (HPU) is a parent created and run organization providing training to parents. HPU works with 300 parents annually to help them better navigate the Hartford School System so they can advocate for their children. HPU is about to launch the National Association of Parent Universities (NAPU) with outreach to cities and towns with parent programs. NAPU is envisioned as a collaborative structure to build community engagement and the ability of parents to lead systems change efforts.

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.

Jumpstart
Jumpstart focuses on preschool children in under-resourced communities because economically disadvantaged children often start kindergarten already behind in their early academic and social-emotional skills, and are more likely to stay behind. They are less likely to read at grade level by the 3rd grade, increasing chances of academic difficulties in later grades.  Teams of 6-7 highly trained Jumpstart college student volunteers engage preschool children in existing early childhood settings in a series of adult-led, child-led, small-group, and large-group activities to foster language, literacy, and social-emotional skill development among the children.

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 Coalition for Children
The Coalition was founded in 1992 with a mission “to improve the lives of children in Middletown and Middlesex County”. Its central premise is that schools cannot alone ensure the success of children. MCC’s goal is to ensure that ALL children grow up in the conditions and have the experiences that are the foundation for adult success.  The major work of the coalition is to serve as the catalyst for improvements to the system of child-serving agencies in Middletown and to connect those efforts and agencies to the larger statewide system.

Middletown Public Schools
Middletown is addressing the lack of developmentally appropriate numeracy and literacy skills demonstrated by K-12 student population data over the past five years. A key strategy is to provide equitable access to a community resource, Bridge to Brilliance (a digital platform that contains over 1,000 interactive books, songs, and games that promote literacy and numeracy and can be accessed in either English or Spanish), for the 19 community-wide school readiness programs that are external to the Middletown School District.

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.

ProBono Partnership
Pro Bono Partnership recruits volunteer lawyers to assist nonprofits in Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York on business legal matters, operates a Legal Resource Helpline, provides educational workshops and webinars on legal topics for nonprofit leaders and staff, and uses its website and newsletter to keep area nonprofits informed on changes to the law that affect nonprofit businesses.

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.

Re-Center
RE•Center Race & Equity in Education is dedicated to building an equitable world where everyone has what they need to grow and thrive. Working to change systems, we envision empowered students supported by caring, racially conscious, critically-thinking adults and nurturing schools and communities. Through anti-racism and equity programs, we help students develop the skills to navigate our multi-cultural society. In partnership with youth, families, schools and communities, we offer safe spaces where people can learn to understand and challenge racism and oppression.

Regional Grade-Level Reading Marketing Communications Plan
The Hartford Campaign for Grade-Level Reading developed a multi-year regional marketing and communication plan. The purpose of developing and implementing this plan is to increase the capacity of the initiative to achieve their community goals around increasing the proportion of children who learn to read by the end of third grade.

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 Center
The Bridge Family Center conducts programs for parent and caregiver education: Circle of Security Parenting, Positive Discipline, and Pizza and Parenting. Circle of Security Parenting is a research-based program that supports and strengthens a parent’s ability to understand a child’s behavior as an expression of their emotional needs and how best to respond to and support those needs; Positive Discipline is a program designed to engage parents in how to teach children important social and life skills, such as self-discipline, in a manner that is deeply respectful and encouraging for both children and adults; and Pizza and Parenting, is a lunch-time discussion series about child development at which guest speakers will engage parents and caregivers about specific early childhood topics. This program is for parents who are unable to dedicate six or eight weeks for a class that requires intensive homework and practice with their children between sessions. Conversations will revolve around the ways parents can support their children’s optimal development.

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

  • Camp Courant