For four years ending in 2022, the nine nonprofits in the Detroit Early Childhood Education Support Initiative worked with and on behalf of over 100 early childhood centers through whole child and the whole family programs ranging from healthy living and nutrition, creative learning and literacy, access to health and human services and parent and caregiver engagement and advocacy.

The organizations also collaborated as the Detroit ECE Support Cohort — with support from nonprofit Mathematica — to identify ways to collectively strengthen the early childhood system, improve coordination with families and providers, and leverage each other’s programming to more holistically serve the needs of children and families.

A new case study authored jointly by cohort members tells the story of the stories of the children and families they served, and shares how the collaboration and self-care through this cohort process strengthened their work together.

“We each have a unique mission, but all share the vision of a Detroit where all children and families have sustainable access to quality early childhood education resources that improve their lives,” write the authors. “Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, we managed to forge authentic relationships and used grant funds to successfully meet the ever-changing needs of their community.”

One lesson: Providers ignore self-care at their own peril. They write: “Even when life gets busy and the work is piling up, take the time to practice self-care, in the same way you care for your community members. Practice self-care and model it for others.”

The nine organizations in the cohort and the basis of their initiative grants were:

• ACCESS to develop a model to support early childhood centers to more effectively access and coordinate with human services resources.
• Children’s Center of Wayne County, Inc. to develop the capacity of center staff to deliver behavioral health interventions to children at their centers. This includes direct service and staff training.
• Detroit Educational TV to expand enrichment programming, creative learning workshops and other efforts aimed at children, parents, and early childhood education providers.
• Detroit Hispanic Development Corp. for workshops on leadership and child development, particularly professional development to help early childhood personnel to work effectively with Hispanic students.
• Keep Growing Detroit to develop garden-based activities and programming at early childhood centers and train early childhood staff to deliver programming related to access to fresh, local produce and healthy eating.
• Learn Early to conduct educator workshops and training to integrate arts and creative learning into literacy and STEM learning, and to engage parents in these efforts.
• Living Arts Detroit to expand residencies in early childhood centers and expand educator and parent workshops on art-based learning in every day teaching and at home.
• Mothering Justice for efforts developing women leaders who have young children in advocating for affordable, high-quality child care. This includes building a public coalition of advocates for a more affordable childcare system in the city of Detroit.
• National Kidney Foundation to work with parents and staff to integrate nutrition education and healthy living principles in young children’s education and the daily practices in their homes.