When the reality of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic was clear many months ago, Start Early and our partners quickly pivoted to support our youngest learners virtually, and we’re continuing to innovate and evolve to ensure our most vulnerable children and families don’t get left behind as the pandemic stretches on.

One of our strongest partnerships is with the Educare Learning Network. In 2000, Start Early developed the first Educare school in Chicago to provide high-quality care, education, and a stimulating learning environment for children birth to age 5. Since then, we have partnered to create 24 Educare schools across the country to provide children in under-resourced communities with quality early learning experiences. In accordance with CDC recommendations, 22 of the 24 operating schools within the Educare Learning Network are currently closed, with 2 schools having reopened to provide essential services at a reduced capacity. But that does not mean our early learning programs have stopped. From online lesson plans to reading and singing sessions via Facebook Lives, our educators are helping to ensure children and families have the resources they need during these challenging times.

Start Early works to provide a bright and just future for all children, and this would not be possible without recognizing that each child, family and community has been uniquely impacted and traumatized by generations of institutional racism and long-tolerated inequities. As an organization committed to making sure that children, particularly our youngest learners, have the best chances in life, we stand in solidarity with those peacefully protesting the historical trauma, institutional racism and police brutality that is rampant in major U.S. cities. We unequivocally condemn this senseless violence and acknowledge the problems that plague communities of color across the country — lack of economic opportunity, over-policing, inaccessible health care, housing instability and environmental inequities. We see these issues, among others, as a direct threat to our mission, and we will continue to identify and prioritize the populations most impacted by these barriers.

Although the racially charged murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and now George Floyd are currently in the spotlight, for every high-profile death that makes national news, thousands of similar incidents are quickly dismissed or ignored. As we face the loss of another Black life taken at the hands of police officers, the raw emotion and exasperation of protesters is justified and heartbreaking. We also see the generational inequities of racism embedded amid this global pandemic. The majority of “essential workers” are people of color who are dying from COVID-19 at disproportionately high rates due to the underlying health conditions that often impact poor and minority communities.

Start Early commits to strengthening and deepening its work as an anti-racist organization that works in true partnership with communities to ensure equitable access to high-quality early childhood care and experiences. We look forward to working with our staff and our partners in the fields of research, policy and practice to explore ways we can leverage our mission to dismantle racism and support children from historically marginalized and under-served populations. We aim to approach this critical work with humility and reflection.

We do not have the answers, nor do we pretend to. However, we are working with our partners to do more than listen and heal. We are working to dismantle and rebuild. We refuse to compromise our mission by tolerating explicit or implied practices and policies that negatively impact the integrity or ability of Black children and their families to thrive and prosper long-term. We are prepared to act accordingly to confront anti-Black policies and practices, and we won’t allow them to go unchecked.

To the Black men, women and children in this country who have been carrying the burden of racial injustice and systemic anti-Black sentiment for generations: we see you, we hear you and your life matters.

From the whole Start Early team (formerly known as the Ounce), our sincere gratitude for joining us for our Annual Luncheon. We were honored to share “Tomorrow’s Hope,” which was generously created and produced by the Saul Zaentz Charitable Foundation. Thank you to our event’s presenting sponsor Peoples Gas, our many other generous sponsors and the Zaentz Foundation for helping make our in-person event possible during these uncertain times.

We hope the film provided inspiration and reassurance as you witnessed how unwavering resilience, parent engagement and early learning experiences can make a difference for every child, especially in times of adversity.

Thank you to our 2020 Annual Luncheon
Presenting, Champion and Premier-level Sponsors!

Presenting Sponsor

Champion Sponsors

Nancy & Steven Crown
The Crown Family
Diana & Bruce Rauner

Premier Sponsors

Leslie Bluhm & David Helfand
The Bluhm Family Charitable Foundation
Anne & Don Edwards
The Hasten Foundation
Cari & Michael J. Sacks
Catherine Siegel
Zell Family Foundation

Despite the unprecedented challenges presented by the COVID-19 crisis, pregnant women continue to receive support from Start Early doulas, or childbirth coaches. Read more about how Start Early’s Healthy Parents & Babies doula, Patricia Ceja-Muhsen, continues to provide support and guidance to pregnant mothers through virtual means.

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Start Early has long believed that a child’s first and most important teacher is their parent. That is why we have been an early champion of recognizing home visiting as a key component of early childhood systems of care and education.

Our very own Nick Wechsler, director for program development at Start Early, has been influencing the home visiting field in Illinois for 30 years and was recently honored as the recipient of the Home Visiting Leadership Award at the Annual Prevent Child Abuse Illinois Statewide Conference.

A Passion for Building Relationships

Nick, who holds a master’s degree in Infant Studies, started his career in the early 1970s, working as a community mental health worker in Chicago, providing therapy to communities in need under the supervision of licensed clinicians. Nick credits his experiences as a stay-at-home dad and as a family day care provider for preparing him for what ultimately became Start Early’s home visiting approach: relationship-based work.

Home Visiting – Helping Parents Through a Life-Changing Transition

Nick’s personal and professional experiences with new parenthood ultimately showed him that home visiting services can considerably support both children and parents.

The days and weeks following the birth of a child can be a time of great joy and excitement for all parents. Developmental science tells us that these first interactions between parents and newborns lay the foundation for a child’s healthy development in school and life. This can also can be a time of extreme stress for parents, exacerbated by exhaustion during a period of physical, hormonal and emotional vulnerability.

Home visitors can provide much-needed support to help ease new parents’ anxieties and provide them with the tools and knowledge to develop the secure attachments that allow children to thrive. By helping parents engage in meaningful play and learning interactions with their children, home visitors influence the development of nurturing relationships that support a child’s ability to grow and learn.

Home Visiting – The Early Years

Today, early childhood home visiting is an established part of national policy and is a publicly subsidized practice here in the U.S. and in many countries around the globe. But it wasn’t always so, Nick reminds us.

Public policy and subsidized center-based care for very young children was limited until 1995, when Early Head Start (EHS) was established. EHS extended home visiting into the Head Start model and added group care as an option for children from birth to age 3.

In the early years, Nick says, childcare professionals didn’t have what we now know as evidence-based models for home visiting. In the 1990s, home visitors drew on the theories of emerging brain science to inform what simply made good sense in supporting parenting: that a child’s early experiences and secure attachments with parents and caregivers lay the emotional, social and cognitive foundation for healthy development and learning.

Championing Home Visiting in Illinois and Beyond

“When I started working at Start Early,” Nick remembers, “we were primarily focused on providing home visiting to teenage parents. In fact, we were the only publicly-funded statewide network for home visiting.”

Throughout his first decade at Start Early, Nick trained and supported home visitors, helping them expand their base of knowledge and enhance skills and practice. He credits this early period for laying the foundation for Start Early’s own approach to home visiting. As early pioneers in the field, Start Early ultimately became a leader in innovating service approaches and advocating for better access to home visiting across Illinois.

The landscape is much different today – home visiting has become more professionalized and is evaluated with the highest level of scientific rigor. The federal government has created guidelines and funds home visiting services through Early Head Start programs. New legislation made possible by the 2010 Affordable Care Act allowed for $351 million to be appropriated annually to support approximately 150,000 parents and children through almost 1 million home visits a year as part of the federal government’s Maternal Infant Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) programs.

Reaching More Children and Families

Over the last three decades, the scope of Start Early’s home visiting work has expanded, and Nick’s work has been key to this development. Under his purview, work that was limited to teenage parents at the beginning has grown in its depth and breadth.

Start Early designs, delivers, trains and supports home visitors who work in under-resourced communities, including home visiting for mothers experiencing homelessness, as well as those in the criminal justice system. Nick and Start Early have also been working with state advocates and local communities to establish a new approach to this work – universal newborn supportive services – which offers all parents home visiting in the first weeks after birth.

“Nick has dedicated years of professional service to support and promote healthy interactions between babies and the people in their lives they count on most to nurture, teach, love and protect them. He exudes a reflective mindset that has shaped many of us as professionals, and he is a trusted and highly valued thought partner, mentor and colleague,” Kelly Woodlock, vice president of national home visiting, says.

Start Early congratulates Nick for this great recognition and we thank him for his commitment to serving children and families!

“The recognition is a bit awkward, yet it also fills me with great gratification and joy. It truly makes my career’s work visible. Knowing that ideas and labor that came from within me have become useful tools for home visitors, that my creations reach into homes and become meaningful in the lives of children and parents during home visits throughout Illinois – this is a personal and professional treasure,” says Nick.

Thank you for being part of such a wonderful night to support Start Early and its mission to provide access to quality education and care to all children and families. This year was unquestionably our best yet – we collectively raised nearly a record-breaking $40,000!

Ounce Bash 2019 would not have been possible without our awesome sponsors ComEd, GCM Grosvenor, Access Search and Epsilon Economics. We want to especially thank our Presenting Sponsor BMO Harris for their generous commitment to Start Early and the Start Early Affiliates Board.

The Start Early Affiliates Board brings together individuals who are committed to becoming champions for young children. The board works to extend the reach of Start Early by using their networks, experience and passion to recruit new advocates for early learning. Learn more about the Start Early Affiliates Board and its members.