Early Childhood Collective
Dedicated to serving the community & connecting people with the resources they need.
Early Childhood Collective connects the coalition of early childhood resources that serves growing families in Douglas County.
To accomplish this mission, we partner with existing agencies that serve families with young children. Early Childhood Collective strives to strengthen these partners’ capacities by selecting, designing, and evaluating projects, programs and policies implemented by these partners.
Early Childhood Collective approaches these partnerships with an eye to strengthening families by recognizing and facilitating access to five factors that improve child outcomes and protect families from abuse and neglect.
Our History
In the late 1990s a growing multidisciplinary, inter-agency group of individuals requested and received support from the Kansas Health Foundation to develop a vision. The vision “The Early Years Building Blocks for the Future” and the mission “To ensure and all Douglas County families of children under six have what they need to successfully parent their young children, thereby fostering positive parent-child relationships and leading to success in school and in life” have guided the coalition. Early Childhood Collective (ECCo), formerly known as Success By 6 or SB6, as it became known, began preparing and submitting funding applications.
Early Childhood Collective has received grants or partnered with other agencies to support early literacy, quality and affordability of early care and education, early childhood mental health consultation, parenting education, preventing homelessness for families with infants and toddlers, and paid maternity leave.
Emergent literacy investments have remained consistent. Early on ECC’s READ, TALK, SING campaign, raised the awareness of how parent-child relationships result in positive outcomes. SB6 help embed literacy coaches in early care and education classrooms. ECCo purchased “6 by 6 Ready to Read” materials for distribution through partners. Recently, ECCo become the sponsor for Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library of Douglas County and for the Race Education And Development (READ) project to install little libraries.
In 2004, ECCo became an independent non-profit agency with a board of directors. ECCo leadership continued to invest in our early childhood implementing partner agencies thus maintaining a community-wide system building strategy.
Of course, no progress would have been possible without the trust of donors and grants and contracts from the Children’s Cabinet, the United Way, KS Dept. for Children & Families, KS Dept. of Education, KS Dept. of Health & Environment, U.S. Dept of Education, the KS Health Foundation, the St. Patrick’s Day Parade Committee, the Douglas County Community Foundation, and the City of Lawrence.
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