LIVE UNITED Y’All!

by Judy Schroeder, Manager of Neighborhood Engagement

Because of Darlene Seabrooks, I’m meeting some wonderful young moms who are getting involved with our Ages & Stages “Action Research.”  I want you to meet some of them, so we’re making a video that I’ll post for you in a few weeks.

Since Metro United Way plans for every child in our Greater Louisville community to be prepared and ready for kindergarten, we have to be asking…HOW? (Where’s Superman when you need him?)

The Ages & Stages Questionnaire (ASQ) is one tool used by hundreds of local parents to learn more about what their child is learning, and what they, as parents, can do for their infants and toddlers. After all, free and confidential assistance is available to all Kentucky children under age 3 who have developmental needs, regardless of income. Let’s figure out how to use that!

Nearly 900 families from all backgrounds, scattered throughout dozens of different zip codes, are already involved. That tells me parents from all backgrounds are looking for information about their child’s development, and they are getting it with a personal touch provided by your Metro United Way.

Right now, we’re finding that around 20% of our children generally need some help. Those parents get a personal phone call to discuss great community services that can do that.

Maybe because of my special bias as a Portland neighborhood resident, I always have to ask whether the families who are getting involved include our poorest neighbors.

GREAT NEWS:  In the course of this Action Research study, we’ve seen the few returns we started with from predominantly poor/moderate income zip codes (which were 5% or less) rise to at least 27% of the returns we have now.  We find that some of those neighborhoods are doing better than others. For example, in Shawnee up to 75% of the children are scoring “typical” or better.

It’s also true (at this point in time) that our Action Research neighborhood has the highest participation numbers across Jefferson County. That’s good. The outreach helped.

What’s really important though, is that 60% of these scores are saying that children need some specific help, three times the results in the general population, from what we see now.

Returns from Parkway Place Housing, where there is a median household income of less than $15,000 per year, jumped in July-August 2010 due to participation by our partner, the California Child Development Center, and Darlene Seabrooks. Ms. Darlene is the trusted community advocate and mentor at the Housing Authority’s after-school Tutoring Center who graduated from the Center for Neighborhoods’ Neighborhood Institute with the idea that she wanted to make a difference for children and families’ education.  She has!

She is connecting us to interested parents, who are involved only because Ms. Darlene figured out how to get them involved. Now let’s keep them involved, because parents are the real Superman to their children.
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To request an Ages & Stages Questionnaire, call 2-1-1, or complete a request form for Ages & Stages Questionnaires on Metro United Way’s website.

Advocacy, Education, Income Ages & Stages Questionnaires, ASQ, Children, Community, early childhood, making a difference, Neighborhood Engagement, parenting, Success By 6

By Judy Schroeder

Anybody play BINGO? I used to love Bingo on a Friday night, with my Grandmother in the church basement. Oh yes, the smoke-filled basement with gray-haired ladies who love a child who will fetch more cards for them! Easy tips. Especially from those lucky winners who heard the caller sing out that last number on their sheet, and it lined up so perfectly across the columns on the page: B-I-N-G-O.

Well, on some days I can still get that excitement – in much healthier, smoke-free church basements – when the right people come together for the right reasons, and discover ideas that are right for their families and friends.

Two weeks ago, I was at Greater Friendship Baptist Church, in the California neighborhood of West Louisville, with fifteen young mothers, their children and grandmothers, listening to their ideas and hopes for their children’s future. They are using a little tool called the Ages & Stages Questionnaire to learn more about how to help their children learn.

Ladies and gentlemen, we had a “B-I-N-G-O!”

Because trustworthy relationships take time, a few years ago when I had the pleasure of meeting Gwen Kelly from the California neighborhood I could only hope that our work together would begin to make a difference. At that time the neighborhood had one of the worst reputations in the City for youth violence. Could we expect to see more young adults owning their neighborhood in a positive way, as young moms, dads, and community workers just a few years later?

Never underestimate the power of people who care.

In this case those people were Gwen and her neighbors, Ms. Robbie Bell and Dreema Jackson with many others, with the help of a couple of great nonprofit organizations who had your support through Metro United Way. The Community Farm Alliance had just published the West Louisville Food Assessment (BridgingTheDivide.pdf) that revved up all of the community conversation you may be hearing about inner-city “food deserts” and healthy farm-to-community solutions. We started a Farmers Market that brought the community together around Victory Park, where many people had said no one even had enough money or interest for healthy food. The new California Collaborative hired Michael Dean, who also lives facing the park. Four years and many more people later, the California Farmers’ Market sells produce out of raised-bed gardens cultivated by neighborhood youth on land provided by New Directions Housing Corporation/Neighborhood Initiatives and sold at Victory Park every Saturday morning this summer.

Victory Park is being reclaimed for children and families. Community institutions like Greater Friendship Baptist Church and neighbors like Ms. Robbie, Michael Dean, and Gwen are going for a “cover-all” to turn their neighborhood around! Their children and grandchildren will have the benefit.

Ladies and gentlemen, that’s a B-I-N-G-O!

General, Giving, Health, Volunteering "California Neighborhood", "Community Conversations", "Farmers Markets", "Vital Neighborhoods", Ages & Stages Questionnaires, success

By David Langdon
Bulldogs in the Bluegrass Intern for Metro United Way

The job title “Intern” doesn’t usually bring to mind the most revered of all positions. For those of you reading now, if you smell coffee, it could be that an intern just placed a cup on your desk, or maybe your carpet still reeks of cappuccino from the last time your intern spilled it on the floor. Just don’t forget to yell at him for forgetting the cream and sugar, or else he’ll never learn!

For some interns, however, this rite of passage goes more smoothly and productively than for others. In fact, as an intern this summer for Metro United Way’s Community Impact Department, I can playfully mock my less-fortunate brethren while knowing that I did a lot more this summer than familiarize myself with the world of coffee makers and copying machines. I was lucky enough to be placed right into the grit of Metro United Way’s extensive work on early childhood education, a role that enabled me to participate in the inspiring effort to meet this region’s ambitious educational goals. And while my entire summer was not spent on early childhood education, I was exposed to enough of it to get a sense of how much Metro United Way does for Kentuckiana and how much is still left to be done.

I began my early childhood research by working with the Ages a& Stages Questionnaires (ASQ), a component of Success By 6 that allows parents to track the developmental progress of their children. Once I was well-versed in that, I took my show on the road and shared the good news of ASQs with several million parents (or maybe just a few hundred) at the Kindergarten Countdown event at Slugger Field. Back in the office, I later found myself working over data figures that told the story of how Metro United Way’s educational initiatives are funded, all the while helping to do what I could with the Border’s Book Drives and college scholarship interviews. Though these efforts cover a wide array of educational projects, they only scratch the surface of the enormous educational machine at work in Metro United Way.

The final early childhood education project I worked on reminded me that despite all of the great work that is being put into the community’s children, we cannot afford to get complacent. The educational figures I studied from JCPS schools, though they are improving in many categories, are staggering nonetheless. Dropout rates, reading levels, and sub-par testing performance remind us how pressing the educational agenda is for the health of the community’s future. For those of us who want to fight to improve the opportunities and the lives of local youth, I suggest that we work together, join hands, and, if I dare say it, live united as we strive toward the common goal of educational progress.

As my time at Metro United Way is coming to a close, I want to point out how fortunate the local community is to have so many people who deeply care about the health of their community and their neighbors. All of the early childhood projects I worked on and the people with whom I worked reflected this. I owe a tremendous thank you to Metro United Way—not just for giving me an internship that demanded more than cappuccino skills—but for letting me work side-by-side with the very people who are going to bring this great community to the cutting edge of education.

If you would like to get involved with education in greater Louisville, please visit our volunteer website!

McKaye, Kayla and David - our wonderful Bulldogs in the Bluegrass!

*Note* – David, along with two other Yale students, connected with Metro United Way through the Bulldogs Across America Internship Program. Click here to learn how your organization or company can get involved!

Education Ages & Stages Questionnaires, ASQ, Borders Book Drive, early childhood education, Kindergarten Countdown, Success By 6