For many children in India, getting to early education centers is impossible while their parents work long hours at often temporary jobs. So what if early education centers traveled to kids instead? Executive Director Sumitra Mishra describes how Mobile Creches has been doing just that for 50 years.
This week, Home Grown launched a new initiative—Leading From Home—focused on identifying and supporting provider leaders across the country. The...
Why Don’t We Just Do That?
Over Cocktails, Restaurateurs Hatch a Plan for Literacy
Three years ago, Amanda and John Horne, owners of Anna Maria Oyster Bar in Bradenton, Florida, heard that 51 percent of children in their local Manatee County school system couldn’t read at grade level by third grade. They were appalled.
“This was horrific,” Amanda says. “We had no idea that this was an issue.”
Over cocktails one night, Amanda and John wondered what they could do. Their clientele is largely composed of older “grandparent-type” people. They have four restaurants and a mailing list of more than 24,000 customers. What if they could pair children up with a grandparent figure or somebody who cares about them, read with them and maybe instill them with a love of reading?
When 25-year-old Masuma arrived in Colorado from Afghanistan in 2016 with her husband and toddler, she had already escaped the...
Seedlings in the Garden: Childhood Food Sovereignty and the Push to Reclaim Indigenous Foodways
After their food systems were systematically destroyed, America’s Indian Tribes are teaching their children the importance of healthy diets through agricultural education
Every weekday morning, Nichole Efird greets her students with a hug and the promise of another adventure. With a curriculum...
First Responders to a Hidden Emergency
Behind ReadyNation’s Report on the U.S. Child Care Crisis
How can the United States ensure that the next generation will be prepared for the responsibilities of citizenship? Barry D....
In a 2016 Atlantic feature, Alana Semuels calls Fairfield County, Conn., the epicenter of American inequality. “Bridgeport,” she writes, “an...
Mobilizing Communities So All Children Make the Grade
Pop Up Neighbor events, community, collaboration, mobilization
Even without advance promotion, when word got out that the SuperMatt Laundromat in Sarasota, Florida, was offering free laundry all day, neighborhood residents formed a steady stream of customers.
Not only was laundry-and-all-the-fixings free—a boon to low-income families who can ill afford the $35 to $50 a week they spend trying to keep their kids in clean clothes—the food bank was there with abundant food to restock their pantries.
Best of all, there were books—lots of books—and plenty of volunteers to read to children while the adults did as many loads of laundry as needed. When the children left, books went home with them.
It’s a cruel irony of the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) pandemic: the youngest children, whose brains depend on education for healthy brain...
The increased public understanding that childhood adversity, including adverse childhood experiences, can cause trauma and toxic stress—and, in turn, have a lasting impact on children’s physical and mental health—presents an important opportunity to turn this awareness into action.
In the past few decades, public libraries have undergone a quiet transformation from sleepy repositories of books to full-fledged community...
PBS’ “Molly of Denali” a Hit with Kids and Parents
Young, Indigenous Vlogger Introduces Life in Rural Alaska
Molly Mabray is a 10-year-old of three Athabascan tribes, Gwich’in, Koyukon, Dena’ina, who lives in a small Indigneous village in rural Alaska. She’s also PBS’ newest character in the slate of children’s animated shows and the first Native American lead in history. So far “Molly of Denali” has been a hit not only among its target audience of ages 4 to 8 but with their parents and those who have grown enamored with Molly.