Early Care and Education

Our Funding Focus

All kids deserve caring, high-quality and culturally relevant early learning opportunities. However, significant challenges and barriers in education systems disproportionately affect children of color, children from low-income families and English learners.

This is why our funding focuses on advancing equity in systems of care and learning for all children from birth to age 8 through approaches focused on:

• Improving the quality, equity and accessibility of child care and education systems.
• Achieving adequate and equitably allocated public funding for early childhood education and child care systems.
• Supporting structures for workforce and professional development that strengthen the pipeline and quality of early childhood teachers and workers, especially educators and leaders of color, and improve the quality of early care jobs.
• Engaging in policy advocacy and family and community engagement to support innovations and improvements to early care systems that are responsive to communities’ needs.

Our grantees making a difference

• A diverse statewide coalition wins bipartisan support for early childhood education in Tennessee.
• Mobile preschools, adult education and peer mentoring serve two generations at a time in Colorado.
• Public investments ensure infants and toddlers get a good start in education.