Building a community of voices for young children and their families

Commuity Voices Column
Michael Palmer
DPFC Board Chair

Engaging and cultivating new voices for young children has never been more important for Durham’s Partnership for Children. We have been working over the past 12 years to close the preparation gap for young children to ensure more children are successful in school and in life.

   Our funded programs have continued to make incremental progress despite increased community need and reduced funding over the years. Collectively, we’ve also worked long and hard over the past decade to build and enhance collaborations to better serve young children.

   Yet, we still have much to do to raise awareness and engage new voices to amplify the wisdom of investing in the optimal development of our youngest children.
Our focus over the next three years is to work to attract more advocates in the business, medical, faith and higher education sectors to be a voice for young children.

   By building more voices for children, we can not only begin to educate others about the on-going needs of young children in Durham County, but we can also harness specific strengths of people in these sectors to work collaboratively to tackle the issues.

   Through initiatives that reach out to these sectors, together, we're building a common vision of what school readiness is, what it looks like, how a community can support it, and the skills children must possess to be ready to learn.

   Initiatives, such as Durham County’s Results Based Accountability (RBA) process through the Children Ready For and Succeeding in School Committee, Docs For Tots NC, Corporate Champions for Children, and working with the faith community’s End Poverty Now 0 – 5 group, support the alignment of our community's early childhood efforts. 

   We have established initiatives on all fronts, but we can’t do this in a vacuum. We need our current constituents to engage others about the importance of this work.

I’m happy to be leading this organization as we continue to find new ways to integrate early childhood into the fabric of community discourse and ultimately our community response.

Read the Next Story

Return to e-Newsletter Homepage