Tag: catherine morse

Success By 6, Local Leaders Give Updates to Stakeholders

UWATX held a breakfast briefing event at Google Fiber on February 5th to update business and philanthropic leaders and stakeholders on how far the Success By 6 program has come–and how many more children still remain unserved. Speakers included Dr. Leah Newkirk Meunier, UWATX Vice President of Mission Advancement; Mayor Steve Adler; Dr. Paul Cruz, Superintendent of Austin ISD; Elizabeth Sobel-Blum, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas; Catherine Morse, UWATX Board Chair; and Mollie Duckworth, WLC Member. Speaker Highlights: –Elizabeth Sobel-Blum noted four numbers to remember: 700 = In the first few years of a child’s life, 700 new neural connections are formed every second. 18 = Differences in the size of a child’s vocabulary first appear at 18 months of age, based on whether they were born into a family with high education and income, or a family with low education and income levels. 2:1 = By age three, children with college-educated parents or primary caregivers had vocabularies 2 to 3x larger than those whose parents had not completed high school. 3:1 = Adults who recall having seven or eight highly stressful experiences in childhood are 3x more likely to have cardiovascular disease. –Dr. Leah Meunier gave an update on the Success By 6 program. There are 6,344 low-income three-year-olds in Travis County. 2,036 are served through Head Start, childcare subsidies or their local school district; 4,308 remain unserved. –Mayor Adler noted that the city has increased its funding for preschool by 25% and sees it as a highly important […]

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Samsung, BuildASign Nominated for Philanthropy Awards

Our corporate partner Samsung Austin Semiconductor was nominated for the “Outstanding Philanthropic Large Organization” award from the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP) this year. The company will be honored for this achievement at the Philanthropy Day awards ceremony on February 4th, 2016. Samsung Austin Semiconductor’s General Counsel and Senior Director of Public Affairs, Catherine Morse, who also serves as UWATX Board Chair, spoke to us about the accomplishment and how Samsung’s long-term investment in UWATX played a large part in the company being recognized for this award. “We feel good about this award because we have a focused philanthropic effort on early childhood education, youth development, STEM education and environmental sustainability,” Morse said. “By far, our largest partner for the past five years has been United Way.” Samsung was nominated for this award by UWATX, Open Door Preschools and Breakthrough Austin. In 2010, Samsung Austin Semiconductor made a $1 million donation to our Success By 6 program. Since then, more than 200 families have benefitted from the program and numerous high-quality preschool programs have been opened as a result. “As a community investor, we really want to focus on evidence based-programming and that’s what sets United Way apart from other nonprofits. UWATX is a good steward of Samsung’s dollars because they measure outcomes of programs and hold other nonprofits accountable for the work they do. It doesn’t make much sense to invest in things that just ‘feel good,’ but things that work and result in better outcomes for the community. […]

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