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By
PATRICIA SWANSON, Scripps Howard News Service,
April 30, 2003. Excerpt
As
executive director of Welborn
Foundation in Evansville, Ind., Marjorie Soyugenc
has funded programs to solve a myriad of community
problems.
Dozens of organizations received grants, and all were
worthwhile, Soyugenc said.
"But
we realized you could put money in a lot of causes
and not necessarily see results. You weren't getting
at the root causes," she said.
Listening to a professor from Johns Hopkins University
talk about brain science research and early childhood
development, she realized that is exactly the type
of project her foundation needed to be supporting.
It met the foundation's goal of improving "the health
and the quality of life" in the Evansville area.
Getting involved in helping children early - before
they enter school - seemed as if it would be effective
in helping combat nearly all the problems the foundation
tries to address: poor school achievement, drug use,
juvenile delinquency, the struggling local economy,
poor child health.
Welborn
is not the only foundation that has decided that investing
in early childhood development programs is financially
efficient.
The
Pew
Charitable Trusts is so convinced of the value
of such programs that it has diverted much of its
educational funding to early childhood development.
The
Early Childhood Initiation Inc., a successful
program in Miami, has received $260,000 to expand
its program into other parts of the state.
The
Committee for Economic Development, made up of
business leaders and university presidents, was given
$650,000 to push for pre-kindergarten programs nationwide.
The
Dekko
Foundation, a small foundation in Kendallville,
Ind., has launched its TriUMPh project to aid early
childhood causes.
In
the Cleveland area, the Gund
Foundation supports a wide variety of activities
in early childhood education, including $250,000 to
Starting Point who has used the money to train child-care
workers and to try to build support for paying child-care
workers - among the lowest-paid jobs - better wages
and training.
In
Owensboro, Ky., the Hager Foundation has tried to
focus public attention on the need for quality early
childhood programs
Full
Story available at Scripps Howard News Service
(Patricia Swanson is a reporter for the Courier &
Press in Evansville, Ind. Contact her at 812-424-7711
or swansonp(at)courierpress.com.)
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