We believe strong families are essential to helping children be school ready. Continuing a six-year tradition of helping parents foster their children’s development, the Zero to Five Funders Collaborative is now working with its partner providers to launch Bachman Lake Together, scheduled to open fall 2015.
Community Ownership
At Bachman Lake Together, families are taking control of their neighborhood’s destiny. The Collaborative is intentionally taking a back seat, putting families firmly in the driver’s seat of designing a center that best serves them and their neighbors.
Trained parents leaders will be leading discussions in the months ahead to identify community needs and select service providers. The Collaborative will support these efforts by the space, staff support and program evaluation.
A Place to Learn
Bachman Lake Together will bring resources to help parents support their children’s development together under one roof. Families will have access to coordinated early learning experiences and parent engagement programming, all from the same experienced providers they know and trust from their neighborhood. Lumin Education, one of our partner agencies, also plans to open a school on the same property in the next three to five years.
A Place to Thrive
Many families in the Bachman Lake community face daily trials including poverty, accessing quality education and adapting as immigrants to a new culture and way of life. To help protect families from stresses that can interfere with learning and development, Bachman Lake Together will provide services to help children, their parents and the entire community thrive.
Resources will be selected based on the needs and requests of the community. These may include services such as financial education and coaching, health services, leadership development, education and more.
This kind of place-based, collective impact approach is modeled on other innovative programs like Brighter Futures in Hartford and Magnolia Place in Los Angeles.
