Tag: center project

Community Partner Spotlight: Mainspring Schools

Since opening its doors in 1941, Mainspring Schools has been a best-in-class nonprofit preschool that works to eliminate the early childhood school readiness gap. Their mission is “to deliver the highest quality early education and care to Austin’s most economically disadvantaged children – along with services so each child and parent have tools for success in school and life.” With a mission like that and its dedication to providing high-quality, innovative, and researched based services to all children, Mainspring serves as a model for early childhood centers in Austin and beyond. As the backbone organization for early childhood in Austin/Travis County, United Way supports more than 20 childcare centers serving children from low-income families. Mainspring envisions a future in Austin in which all students have an equal opportunity to start school with the skills, support and wellness to compete and succeed in school and life. “We firmly believe that you have to start early to build a strong foundation for at-risk kids. If you get the first years right, the path to success is clearer for our children,” says Jason Gindele, Executive Director for Mainspring. Gindele’s says of his team that they “often say, facetiously, that [their] mission is to get rid of all other charities. That’s obviously not true, but [they] do believe that if you get the first years of a child’s life right, it can prevent so many issues down the road that require the attention of our society.” In Travis County, 42 percent of children under […]

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Community Partner Spotlight: Todos Juntos, Everyone is Family

Nestled on the East Side of Austin, Texas, Todos Juntos has been changing lives one family at a time for 10 years. Founder and Executive Director, Christina Collazo, has been a “Catalyst for Change” long before she was nominated for this year’s Mission Capital Award. Collazo began implementing a 2Gen (also known as Dual Gen) approach in her work a decade ago before it became the buzz-word it is today. She saw the value in raising families out of poverty through an intergenerational approach. Her vision took her out of the classroom, and into the non-profit sector where she has built an organization from the ground up. Amidst many hardships she faced along the way, she never balked in the face of adversity. “Christina Collazo is a pioneer who understood [the complex problem of intergenerational poverty] and saw its solution. She intuitively saw the link between outcomes for children and outcomes for their parents,” Sue Carpenter, Chief Programs Officer for United Way for Greater Austin said. “Many of the students at the predominately Latino high school in Austin where she worked were reading below grade level, and their parents, eager to engage and support their children, struggled to overcome language barriers and low-education levels themselves. For Christina, it was the stereotypical light bulb moment. If only she could reach the entire family earlier when the return on investment was so much greater and pair language and skills training for parents with high-high quality early education for their children.” Collazo’s solution […]

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Americorps, Literacy Coaches Make a Difference for Young Children

In Travis County, only about 42% of children from low-income families enter Kindergarten ready to learn. Research also tells us that there is a large vocabulary gap at age four between children from low-income families and children from high-income families. These are striking statistics because children who start school behind, are more likely to stay behind, and many never catch up. They are also more likely to need special education services and by adulthood, many drop out of high school and become part of the juvenile justice system. In order to support language development and improve school readiness among children in our Center Project centers, Success By 6 brought six AmeriCorps members and five Classroom Coaches on board this past fall to provide literacy and math support in early learning centers throughout Austin. The cadre of educators spends between 10 and 40 hours per week working directly with low-income children, building oral language skills, providing engaging research-based math and literacy curriculum, and supporting social-emotional development. This work is done in large groups, small groups and sometimes one-on-one. The supplemental one-on-one and small group instruction is incredibly important as it provides children with individualized instruction that is appropriate for their skill level. After analyzing last year’s interventions, UWATX saw tremendously positive results from this focus on literacy and math development. During the seven-month intervention period, children in our program saw more than 17 months of growth in their receptive language development. Furthermore, nearly 90% of the children from low-income families were developmentally on-target in […]

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Math and Literacy Results Show Huge Strides For At-Risk Kids

One thing that sets United Way for Greater Austin apart from other non-profits is that all of our programs are research-based and results-driven. We are happy to announce the latest set of data showing our Success By 6 program is making a measurable, positive impact on local children. Between August of 2014 and July 2015, five AmeriCorps members were placed at seven Early Learning and Child Development Centers (five of which we work with through our Center Project, two that are family-serving agencies with early literacy programs). The members provided intensive math and literacy interventions to children for seven months. The AmeriCorps members engaged in both small group and one-on-one instruction with the children using research-based curriculum. Results from this project are extraordinary and broken down in three ways: gains made in language development, gains made in math skills and gains made on any assessment. 100% of children who received the intervention made gains in either their math or vocabulary levels, if not both. First, we looked whether children participating in the intervention showed improvement on either their language or math skills. Language skills were assessed by the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) or its Spanish equivalent, Test de Vocabulario en Imágenes Peabody (TVIP). These assessments look at a child’s ability to understand specific words that are said to them, which is called receptive language ability. The math assessment was developed by UWATX’s Success By 6 staff and was based on the High Scope Numbers Plus curriculum. It measures a […]

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Volunteers Spread Love to Local Teachers for Valentine’s Day

According to the Greeting Card Association, 190 million Valentine’s Day cards are exchanged each year. Due in part to United Way for Greater Austin’s first family-friendly Valentine’s Day volunteer event, community members will contribute nearly 1,000 cards to spread love to those giving back in the greater Austin community. On Saturday, February 7th, 25 volunteers created handmade Valentine’s Day cards to acknowledge the teachers and support staff who work every day in our target neighborhoods: Dove Springs, St. John’s and Manor. Volunteers wrote inspiring notes for preschool and middle school teachers, and thanked the businesses who run UWATX employee campaigns. Without the dedicated teachers, principals and staff who support Success By 6 and Target Graduation, programs aimed at improving school readiness and graduation rates, our work would not be possible.   [youtube id=pNu16XsTm4Q]   UWATX is investing in the future of greater Austin. In addition to the community volunteer event, our middle school Volunteer Project Leaders also created cards. These Volunteer Project Leaders are part of an afterschool program at Mendez, Webb and Decker Middle Schools that train middle school students to identify community needs and coordinate volunteer projects. More than 35 middle school students contributed to the massive Valentine’s Day card project by writing notes to their teachers and making appreciation banners to hang in the schools. Valentine’s Day is a day to recognize and appreciate all of the people in your life. We hope this volunteer project inspires you to tell those around you that you love them–whether it is […]

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