Bridgeport Prospers Receives $140,000 Award from StriveTogether for an Equitable Recovery

Systemic racial inequities exposed by COVID-19 heighten the need for systems transformation

Bridgeport, CT— StriveTogether, a national network working to bring communities together around data to make decisions and improve results for kids, today announced Bridgeport Prospers as an awardee of the Challenge Fund. An initiative of United Way of Coastal Fairfield County, Bridgeport Prospers received $140,000 in support.

Bridgeport Prospers joins fifty other communities across 26 states to deliver more equitable outcomes for children and families. These communities are part of the Cradle to Career Network, a national movement led by StriveTogether to ensure every child has every opportunity to succeed.

“Our goal is to ensure success for all children, from cradle to career,” commented Allison Logan, Executive Director of Bridgeport Prospers. “To do that, we take a holistic view, focusing on external initiatives and systems to promote the equitable health and development of families and their children. At the same time, we are focusing internally to ensure that our internal structure and practices advance racial and ethnic equity and justice.”

ADVANCING EQUITY and JUSTICE

Bridgeport Prospers, an initiative of United Way of Coastal Fairfield County, will use the funding to advance equity and justice on three fronts:

• Expanding equitable access to supports for mothers, families and young children. Called The Baby Bundle, these supports include: universal home visiting, supports for moms (doula support and MOMS Partnership), positive parenting practices (Bridgeport Basics), screening tools for child development (Sparkler mobile app), early literacy programs delivered in healthcare settings (Read to Grow, Reach Out and Read), and licensed family care for infants and toddlers (All Our Kin).

  These caregiver supports aim to reduce racial/ethnic disparities in access to care, and to improve maternal health and child school readiness. Currently, many Bridgeport moms don’t receive early pre-natal care, and as many as 70% of entering kindergarteners lack skills needed for success.

• Examining and revising internal and external structures, policies, and practices to promote racial equity and inclusion. The work will be led by Dr. Vanessa Liles--a member of StriveTogether’s 2020 Race & Ethnic Equity Action Team--and will include organization analysis, educational workshops for staff and board members, and elevating community members to positions of leadership and decision-making.

• Engaging community members in identifying needs and in co-designing solutions to meet those needs. This will involve engaging Public Allies and expanding the force and scope of the long-standing Community Messenger program. The Messengers—who share resources with and give voice to community—will grow to reflect community more broadly (e.g., by including youth and senior members). Also, Messengers will be empowered and funded to uplift lived experiences, identify community-led solutions, and join leadership and decision-making tables.

“When the pandemic hit in early 2020, we made the strategic decision to shift cost savings from cancelled events and travel to expand grants we award to our network members,” said Jennifer Blatz, president and CEO, StriveTogether. “With the support of our board of directors, we pivoted and accelerated payment of previously awarded multi-year grants and extended new grants focused on COVID-19 recovery and resilience. The work underway in these communities is vital to the future of our children. We’re supporting the efforts of communities to transform systems so that they produce more equitable outcomes.”

CHANGING SYSTEMS

Beyond just providing immediate supports to families, Bridgeport Prospers is vigorously collaborating with cross-sector partners to change long-term the systems that support families.

Recent efforts to support local Bridgeport partners and their clients impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic have highlighted long-standing systemic inequities. As a result, the organization has identified numerable policies within existing systems--healthcare, education, employment, criminal justice, housing—that have unfairly devastated and destabilized countless children, families, and communities of color.

Internally, Bridgeport Prospers has engaged in deep work as an organization—listening, learning, unlearning, and planning—in order to enter with integrity into public conversations, as they partner with cross-sector organizations and community lived-experience experts to make progress in changing these systems to promote healing, resilience, and equitable outcomes.

In a recent example of system change, Bridgeport Prospers worked in a collective process to align all of the city’s home visiting services to reduce barriers to access. Under the new system, equitable access will be provided through a single referral system connected to the state’s existing 2-1-1 system. And to reduce stigma, the proposed plan will engage families prenatally with trusted “Wellness Navigators” who reflect the city’s racial and ethnic diversity (currently, about 70% of Bridgeport’s population is African American or Latinx).

Another example is the Bridgeport Prospers work to advance doula services for moms, a proven means of improving maternal health equity. To that end, they are partnering with OB providers in the city and advocating for Medicaid financing of doula care, first by working with legislators to define scope and training for doulas in the state.

Many are optimistic that efforts like these can help close what’s known as the “Opportunity Gap”--the inequitable lack of access to resources needed for health, school success, and economic mobility.

“StriveTogether’s unyielding commitment to helping us close the largest Opportunity Gap in the United States and improve the lives of so many children is deeply appreciated, not just by our organization, but by those we serve as well,” said Jeff Kimball, CEO of United Way of Coastal Fairfield County, home of the Bridgeport Prospers initiative. “During this time when so many organizations are struggling under the weight of the Covid crisis, StriveTogether is stepping up to make sure we are equipped to help.”

STRIVETOGETHER INVESTMENTS

Altogether, StriveTogether has provided $20 million in grants since the onset of the pandemic in 2020 and will award another $12 million by the end of 2021. Multi-year commitments from several long-time investors in StriveTogether helped make this possible.

“Our network members are helping their communities change the systems that fail so many families of color and families experiencing poverty. There is tremendous need and opportunity to redefine what’s possible,” Blatz added. “We’re creating a new normal where race, ethnicity and poverty do not determine opportunity or outcome.”

These investments reflect StriveTogether’s ongoing commitment to support its network of cross-sector partnerships as they work to put children and families on a path toward economic mobility. Communities across the country are changing systems like education, housing, health care and more with a goal of eliminating disparities for millions of young people and their families.

GRANT RECIPIENTS

Priority was given to network members serving significant populations of children and families of color who are disproportionately impacted by the pandemic. The following have received funding:

• Achieve Brown County, Green Bay, WI

• Achieve Escambia, Pensacola, FL

• Alamance Achieves, Burlington, NC

• Aligned Impact Muscatine County, Muscatine, IA

• All Hands Raised, Portland, OR

• Baltimore's Promise, Baltimore, MD

• Better Together Central Oregon, Redmond, OR

• Boston Opportunity Agenda, Boston, MA

• Bridgeport Prospers, Bridgeport, CT

• Building Our Future, Kenosha, WI

• The Commit Partnership, Dallas, TX

• Cradle to Career, Rochester, MN

• Cradle to Career Alliance, Columbia, MO

• Cradle to Career Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH

• Cradle to Career Fresno County, Fresno, CA

• Cradle to Career Partnership, Tucson, AZ

• E3 Alliance, Austin, TX

• Eastside Pathways, Bellevue, WA

• The Forsyth Promise, Winston-Salem, NC

• Generation Next, Minneapolis, MN

• Graduate Strong, Bremerton, WA

• Graduate Tacoma/Foundation for Tacoma Students, Tacoma, WA

• Harlem Renaissance Education Pipeline, New York, NY

• Higher Expectations for Racine County, Racine, WI

• imPACT East Idaho, Pocatello, ID

• ImpactTulsa, Tulsa, OK

• Learn4Life, Atlanta, GA

• Learn to Earn Dayton, Dayton, OH

• Marin Promise Partnership, San Rafael, CA

• Milwaukee Succeeds, Milwaukee, WI

• Mission Promise Neighborhood, San Francisco, CA

• Northfield Promise, Northfield, MN

• Norwalk ACTS, Norwalk, CT

• OnTrack, Hagerstown, MD

• Partners for Education, Berea, KY

• Promise Partnership of Salt Lake, Salt Lake City, UT

• Raise DC, Washington, DC

• RISE: Treasure Valley’s Education Partnership, Boise, ID

• The Road Map Project, Seattle, WA

• ROC the Future, Rochester, NY

• Rocky Mountain Partnership, Thornton, CO

• Seeding Success, Memphis, TN

• South Bronx Rising Together, New York, NY

• Spartanburg Academic Movement (SAM), Spartanburg, SC

• Stamford Cradle to Career, Stamford, CT

• Stanislaus Cradle to Career Partnership, Modesto, CA

• Summit Education Initiative, Akron, OH

• Thrive Chicago, Chicago, IL

• Tri-County Cradle to Career Collaborative, Charleston, SC

• UP Partnership, San Antonio, TX

• Waterbury Bridge to Success Community Partnership, Waterbury, CT

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About Bridgeport Prospers

Bridgeport Prospers’ mission is to work collectively as a community of stakeholders to have a positive, measurable, and sustainable impact on outcomes for all children and families, from cradle to career. We focus on a set of seven common outcomes, from healthy and ready at three and kindergarten readiness, to high school graduation and career readiness. The initiative receives backbone support from the United Way of Coastal Fairfield County. Find out more at http://www.unitedwaycfc.org/bridgeportprospers.

About United Way of Coastal Fairfield County

United Way of Coastal Fairfield County’s mission is: “Together, we mobilize our communities to improve people’s lives.” Our vision is that all children in Coastal Fairfield County are successful in school and prepared for success in life. UWCFC serves the towns of Bridgeport, Darien, Easton, Fairfield, Monroe, New Canaan, Norwalk, Stratford, Trumbull, Weston, Westport, and Wilton. Find out more at http://www.unitedwaycfc.org.

About StriveTogether

StriveTogether partners with nearly 70 communities across the country to advance equity so local success stories can become the reality for every child, everywhere. They work to transform failing systems using collaborative improvement and a proven framework for change. The StriveTogether Cradle to Career Network is closing disparity gaps in education, housing and so much more. Together, they impacted the lives of more than 12 million youth — more than half are children of color — across 30 states and Washington, D.C. Learn more at StriveTogether.org.

Innovative Partnership Uses Robotics to Combat Summer Slide

United Way’s STEM Learning Ecosystem Launches Camp:ASPIRE to keep kids learning during COVID-19

This is not your normal summer.  Camps and enrichment programs have been curtailed or cancelled outright.  Children are out of school, but parents are still working—at home or elsewhere.

But imagine that students at home could learn to build robots that mimic animals or solve a community problem.  Now they can, thanks to an innovative virtual summer camp program in robotics offered by the Greater Bridgeport STEM Learning Ecosystem (GBSLE).

The GBSLE is launching Camp:ASPIRE--an acronym for At-home Summer Programs in Robotics and Engineering--designed to immerse local children in hands-on STEM learning activities and creative fun with robots. An initiative of the United Way of Coastal Fairfield County and Bridgeport Prospers, the STEM Ecosystem is offering the program to keep kids safely engaged, and to help combat “summer slide,“ a tendency to lose learning gains made during the school year.

“We’re excited to offer this innovative STEM education program to keep kids learning, problem-solving and growing skills for the future,” commented Gwendolyn Brantley, Lead of the Greater Bridgeport STEM Learning Ecosystem.

Camp:ASPIRE offers a combination of online and hands-on learning with robotics tool kits.  Daily camp classes are taught over Zoom by trained instructors in two-hour sessions.  Based on learnings from the virtual classes, students then complete two hours of activities on their own, using individual robotic UKITs.  The kits contain hundreds of pieces of lights, motors, wheels, and other gear such as sensors. 

“It’s vital to keep kids learning during the summer, when they can lose from one to three months of academic skills,” added Allison Logan, Executive Director of Bridgeport Prospers, home of the STEM Learning Ecosystem.

Students in low income households are particularly vulnerable to loss, since they have fewer resources for learning outside school.  Overall, math skills are at higher risk of loss than reading skills.  Some  experts warn that summer learning may be even more critical this year, as early school closures could mean a “COVID-19 Slide,” where students could fall nearly a full year behind in math.

“Our goal with the camp is to prevent summer learning loss and maintain academic skills needed for the new school year,” said Brantley.  “Our STEM Learning Ecosystem partners mobilized very quickly to make Camp:ASPIRE available to local students.”

STEM Ecosystem partners offering the virtual robotics camp program include ACCESS Educational Services, Bridgeport Public Schools, Cardinal Sheehan Center, New Vision International Ministries, PT Partners, and Stratford’s South End Community Center.  Camp offerings launch this week, with class options for beginning and intermediate learners throughout the summer. 

Learning will continue in the fall as well.  The Stem Ecosystem secured a grant to provide UBTECH advanced learning kits to students at Central Magnet High School.

“I’m so proud of our STEM Learning Ecosystem and their innovative initiatives to provide quality STEM learning experiences that will truly put kids on the path to a promising future,”  commented Jeff Kimball, CEO of United Way of Coastal Fairfield County. 

Camp:ASPIRE was developed through the partnership of UBTECH, a global leader in robots and artificial intelligence, and the STEM Learning Ecosystems Community of Practice, a global initiative dedicated to preparing children to thrive through high quality STEM education.  The program is aligned with Next Generation Science Standards.  A portion of the camp proceeds are returned to the local STEM ecosystems for camp scholarships.

To learn more about Camp:ASPIRE,  contact Gwendolyn Brantley at  gbrantley@unitedwaycfc.org. 

To donate to the program, visit www.unitedwaycfc.org.

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About the Greater Bridgeport STEM Learning Ecosystem (GBSLE)

The Greater Bridgeport STEM Learning Ecosystem mission is to prepare students to become career-ready leaders by providing access to quality STEM learning environments.  It is a collaboration of 35 innovators:  educators, business and civic representatives, non-profits, and youth-serving organizations.  GBSLE  is one initiative of Bridgeport Prospers, a cradle-to-career collective impact initiative. It is a member of the global STEM Learning Ecosystem Community of Practice (SLECoP), a group of 89 cross-sector collaborations seeking to nurture and scale effective STEM learning opportunities for young people. 

About Bridgeport Prospers
Bridgeport Prospers mission is to work collectively as a community of stakeholders to have a positive, measurable, and sustainable impact on outcomes for all children and families, from cradle to career.  We focus on a set of seven common outcomes, from healthy and ready at three and kindergarten readiness, to high school graduation and career readiness. The initiative is funded by United Way of Coastal Fairfield County.  Find out more at: https://www.unitedwaycfc.org/bridgeportprospers.

About United Way of Coastal Fairfield County

United Way of Coastal Fairfield County’s mission is “Together, we mobilize our communities to improve people’s lives.” Our vision is that all children in coastal Fairfield County are successful in school and prepared for success in life. UWCFC serves the towns of Bridgeport, Darien, Easton, Fairfield, Monroe, New Canaan, Norwalk, Stratford, Trumbull, Weston, Westport, and Wilton. Find out more at: https://www.unitedwaycfc.org.