Durham's Partnership for Children invites its friends, partners and community volunteers to see how the Partnership is addressing a county-wide need for our youngest children to continue to have resources to be healthy and ready for school.

The event will include a public release of report cards on indicators for school readiness and young children’s health which includes statistics on the economic security, early intervention, education and preventive health care of more than 23,000 children, birth to age 5, across Durham County. Through assessing data, these reports examine indicators for how ready are families, schools, young children and our communities for school entrance and how the health data on young children compares to state figures.

 

David Lawrence, Jr., former publisher of The Miami Herald and a well-known child advocate from Florida, will deliver the keynote message on new approaches to addressing the needs of young children. Lawrence led the charge to build a $100 million endowment and public referendum for the children of Miami-Dade County.

“Over the past 13 years, we have made a lot of progress to improve early childhood education and provide high-quality child care to children who need help most, but we still are challenged with increasing unemployment and poverty rates and continued limited resources to serve all the young children and families who need help,” said Marsha Basloe, Executive Director of Durham’s Partnership for Children. “By planning a long-term endowment, our Board of Directors’ future vision is to generate additional resources to ensure more children arrive to school healthy and prepared to succeed."