Do you know a family with children attending public Pre-K? Does your child care offer a curriculum incorporating developmental milestones? Have you ever sought care for infant and childhood mental health? Were you one of the 20,000 families in the City of Atlanta who received a free book from the Mayor’s Summer Reading Club?
For all of these and more, you can thank the Georgia Early Education Alliance for Ready Students (GEEARS), an organization started by United Way of Greater Atlanta that’s grown to advocate for a better early education for students across Georgia.
A new commission for a critical challenge
If we learned anything from our successes with the Georgia Early Learning Initiative (GELI) in 2000, it was that it would take multiple sectors working together, from government to businesses to nonprofits, to achieve sustainable results for children ages birth to five.
>> READ MORE: From GELI to Smart Start—A legacy of innovation in early childhood education
In 2008, nearly ten years after kickstarting GELI, United Way of Greater Atlanta convened the Early Education Commission (EEC), a group of volunteer leaders from across industries, to examine the state of early learning. The EEC members met monthly to learn from national experts in the field of early childhood education, visited early learning centers, and studied new research on the neuroscience of early childhood.
Their findings were clear—an investment in the early childhood education landscape was an investment in our entire community.
The EEC based their conclusion on a similar study in Chicago, which found for every $1 invested in an early learning program in their city, nearly $11 was projected to return to the economy within those same children’s lifetimes. What would Greater Atlanta look like with similar investments?
“Economic, education, and neuroscience research clearly indicate the need for increased investment in early childhood education…only then can we develop our own pipeline to a high-quality workforce and increase the long-term sustainability of Metro Atlanta,” wrote co-chairs Beverly Tatum and Dennis Lockhart in the Atlanta Journal Constitution in 2009.
From EEC to GEEARS
The EEC published recommended strategies for next steps, advocating for high quality standards of care for kids across Georgia and launching a statewide public awareness campaign. Very quickly, the vision outgrew the commission’s scope.
“There was a lot of concern about starting a new organization. In fact, the sentiment was not to do it. We didn’t need to start a new organization, didn’t need to divert resources from existing early learning efforts to fund a new one,” remembered United Way of Greater Atlanta President and CEO Milton J. Little, who was tapped to sit on the Early Education Commission his second year at our organization.
However, the group quickly realized that they could accomplish so much more by using the Commission’s momentum to launch an organization with more bandwidth for advocacy focused on children and families across the state of Georgia—not just Atlanta. In 2010, GEEARS was born, led by Board Chair Stephanie Blank, then at the Arthur Blank Family Foundation, and founding Executive Director Mindy Binderman.
The credibility of United Way of Greater Atlanta as a fiscal agent allowed GEEARS to become eligible for grants and other funding that eventually helped the organization branch off and become sustainable on its own. GEEARS has walked alongside United Way of Greater Atlanta as a partner in our work ever since.
“When I was hired as executive director, we had no bank account. We had no money. We had some promises but that was it,” said Mindy. “Being able to depend upon United Way of Greater Atlanta as our fiscal agent allowed me to focus on building an agenda, building a board, and building some policy successes.”
Advocacy wins mean a win for children
Out of all those policy successes, perhaps the most far-reaching was the preservation of Georgia’s lottery-funded Pre-K program. When the state faced a financial deficit in 2011, the legislature considered cutting Pre-K to a half-day program, decreasing learning opportunities for the more than 70,000 kids enrolled each year and putting working parents in a difficult position. When GEEARS stepped in to advocate with research and recommendations, the full-day program as we know it today was saved.
GEEARS was also instrumental in advocating around initiatives like home visiting programs, quality ratings for early learning programs, and creating credentialing for infant and toddler mental health services in Georgia.
The organization has gone on to create programs of their own that we are still proud to partner with today.
The Mayor’s Summer Reading Program distributes 15,000 to 20,000 books to Atlanta families each year and drive partner-led literacy activities for Atlanta families. The GEEARS-led PAACT: Promise All Atlanta Children Thrive has orchestrated repair and renovation grants, increasing quality at early learning programs in underserved neighborhoods across Greater Atlanta.
>> READ MORE: Introducing the newly renovated Learning Legends Academy
“In 15 years, we have really made an impact in convincing legislators, policymakers, and others of the importance of the first five years. People now really do talk about brain development and that foundational aspect—the first five years of a child’s life—far more than they did when we first started,” said Mindy.
“I remember we were at an event once in West Georgia where someone said, ‘Oh, you know, I didn’t realize that much happened before a child went to kindergarten.’ I think that people understand now how critical the first five years are.”
Just as the first five years of a child’s life are so critical for growth and development, GEEARS experienced its own formative journey during the first five years under United Way of Greater Atlanta’s umbrella. Today, we are proud to see the organization thrive as an independent partner, continuing to impact the early education landscape across the state.
You can also have an impact on the first five years, the most important years of a child’s life. Support the educational work of United Way of Greater Atlanta and our partners by donating today.