Through our Success By 6 program, UWATX makes sure every child is ready for kindergarten. To realize that ambitious goal, we’re both working to improve child care services and also through parent education. Recently, we have focused increasingly on using leading-edge strategies to spread information about early childhood development to parents in the Austin community. Not only do we foster our own innovative programs like Play To Learn, which fosters school readiness at home, but by partnering with other pioneering services to make sure our community is taking advantage of everything that’s out there. One of these services is Text4baby. “Text4baby helped show me how to interact with my baby – playing with baby, reading with baby, making baby laugh. When I started seeing my baby do the things that I was told I should be seeing her do I felt relieved and happy! I really got so much out of the service.” –April R. Austin mother and text4baby user Text4baby reaches parents as early as possible—during pregnancy. It’s a free text messaging service that provides timed and relevant information for pregnant women and new mothers on prenatal care, labor and delivery, breastfeeding, vaccination, immunization, and more. Critical brain development occurs during a child’s first few years of life—through these early interventions, we have an even better chance of making a more positive and profound impact on these children’s lives. Since our partnership began in 2012, we have seen a 78% enrollment increase for text4baby in Travis County – that means 1,578 moms have signed up for […]
Read MoreEducation shouldn’t end when the school day does
80 percent Portion of students’ WAKING hours spent outside of school According to the most pervasive narrative, school is the place where students gain critical academic skills that will determine their success later in life and students attend school as it if were a job, mixed in with some opportunities for creativity and socializing. On the other hand, time spent outside of school, especially summer, is associated with vacation and leisure – but this narrative ignores the fact that students spend nearly 80 percent of their WAKING hours outside of school. Out of School Time (OST) refers to the after-school hours, mornings before school, weekends and summer that make up the bulk of students’ time . In a state where 68% of students come from households where both parents work, OST programs keep kids safe, supported and engaged after the bell rings Unfortunately, OST programs are not meeting the needs of our community – only one in three of OST sites offer enough days to positively impact students and less than a quarter of low-income students are participating in OST programs at the recommended level. The result is that low-income students face a substantial disadvantage because of a lack of summer programs: they lose reading skills and tech literacy in the summer months, where their high-income peers with more access to books and technology actually benefit from the summer months. In all, half of the achievement gap can be attributed to summer learning inequalities. We are working to change this story […]
Read MoreWhy Digital Literacy Matters
We’ve been working with Famigo for several years to help low-income families prepare their children for success in school by leveraging technology and local resources. Since it’s Digital Learning Day, we asked their team to write this post about why this topic is so important. [hr] Digital literacy is a foundational skill necessary to navigate the schoolroom, peer relationships, academic careers and every other aspect of 21st century life. Famigo and United Way for Greater Austin believe that ensuring that the families of central Texas are digitally literate is of the utmost importance. What is Digital Literacy? Digital literacy is more than just knowing how to download a book onto an e-reader or how to send a mass text message. In today’s society it means knowing how to responsibly use media in multiple forms to accomplish a task. It also means knowing how to avoid unwanted or inappropriate content. Today, 79% of students are required to submit or access lessons online, and 29% of teachers report that they integrate social media into their coursework—a number that rises to 80% for college professors. These digital literacy statistics are reflected in later life as well. Today, 4 of the 7 fastest growing jobs directly require technology skills, and 80% of Fortune 500 companies only accept online applications. It is therefore extremely important that children learn from their earliest ages how to responsibly manipulate and use digital content. Fast Facts 79% of students are required to submit or access lessons online 29% of […]
Read MoreTo understand how many families struggle, we need to look at savings and assets
Written by: Don Baylor In our mind’s eye, we typically picture people struggling economically as individuals or families either disconnected from steady employment or those with jobs earning wages below the poverty level. What we too-often fail to consider is how much it truly takes to cover everyday expenses in our community and what might happen if income is interrupted. The federal poverty guidelines consider a family of four to be poor if the family income is $23,550 or less, but these numbers grossly underestimates the income necessary to meet a family’s basic needs. According to CPPP’s Better Texas Family Budgets, a Greater Austin family of four needs to earn more than $50,000 per year to cover housing, transportation, food, child care and other expenses. Notably, this “break-even” salary does not include any debt service or allow for any type of household savings. In order to save for a rainy day and college, the same Austin family needs to earn about $1,000 more in annual income. While one in five Greater Austin families is officially income-poor as defined by the federal poverty level, a bigger share of Greater Austin families are living paycheck-to-paycheck and experience economic insecurity, with low incomes, insufficient savings, or both. What’s more, income is only part of the story, because while income gets you by, assets get you ahead – and in our community nearly twice as many families are considered poor when we look at poverty through the lens of assets. An individual or household […]
Read MoreSuccess By 6 Champions High-Tech Early Education Initiatives
To make sure children are prepared for school and life, parents need a variety of tools from the time they learn about their bundle of joy right through kindergarten and beyond. But parents are busy and information about how to prepare children is often hard to access, which is why United Way for Greater Austin (UWATX) Success By 6 is championing two initiatives leveraging mobile technology to educate parents as they become their child’s first teacher. We’re partnering with Text4baby, a health literacy initiative where mothers receive weekly text messages, and Ready Rosie, a bilingual video curriculum that teaches parents how to incorporate early learning into daily activities. To sign up for Text4baby, women text “BABY” (or “BEBE” for Spanish) to 511411 and then receive three texts per week on topics like immunization, nutrition, baby’s development and safe sleep practices. The messages are timed to the mother’s due date or their baby’s birth date and go from pregnancy until the baby’s first birthday. Text4baby has enrolled more than 600,000 U.S moms since its February 2011 launch. Locally, UWATX has promoted Text4baby to low-income mothers at community health fairs with posters like the one on the right and included it as a resource at WIC clinics – and it worked: we increased use in Travis County by 70 percent from 2012. Services like Text4baby are critical as low-income children under six are our fastest growing demographic. Prepared parents are a key first step in helping children get on the right path […]
Read MoreWhat’s the best way to make a difference as a corporation?
How do you enable your employees to make a difference in a way that maximizes their impact, builds professional skills, and increases their engagement? In addition, how do you use your unique position in the market to enhance these impact efforts and market yourself as a thought leader in that particular area in a way that drives business benefit? These are the main questions facing companies as they develop their corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy, and as the leader of a CSR program they are questions I wrestle with every day. My company, the Advisory Board, a Washington, D.C. and Austin, Texas based research, consulting, and technology firm focused on elevating the performance of healthcare and higher education organizations, has always been focused on service. We were founded thirty years ago on principles such as a “spirit of generosity” and going “beyond commerce” to help our members and those in need. However, our employees have sought to maximize this ethos of service by recently pushing us to ensure we utilize their skills, talent, and interests in the most effective manner. One of the trends at our firm and across the country is that volunteerism and responsibility efforts are increasingly employee-driven and focused on impactful service, rather than a top-down push from executives focused on using CSR as a driver of the bottom line (though executive interest in CSR is also an increasing trend). This push has led to a surge in skills-based volunteering interest, allowing employees to use their combined time, […]
Read More