• An overview of the Initiative
• The First Five Years
• Current Project Goals and Objectives

In 2008, the Foundation refunded the initiative an additional two years in order to deepen the implementation of the professional development plans as well as address issues of policy and increased inter-agency communication. As CURL and the participating agencies move into a new phase of the partnership with the Foundation, the issue of sustainability is at the forefront as agencies strive to maintain implementation of professional development policies and procedures created in the first five years of this initiative.

The current goals of the initiative are the following:
         

1. Continue targeted financial support of the participating agencies’ program quality and professional development opportunities for classroom staff.
2. Utilize community assessment profiles to facilitate each agency’s ability to proactively address changes in the agencies’ geographic community as well as the early childhood education field.
3. Continue the existing cohort model (policy; program leaders) and expand to include an executive cohort to facilitate inter-agency dialogue around issues pertaining to Goals 1 and 2.
4. Partner with the Foundation to maximize utilization of McCormick Foundation- funded organizations to leverage external services and expertise.

Outcome

To assist each agency’s creation of a strategic plan based on their community assessment profiles and issues specific to the agency. The goal is to facilitate each agency’s ability to proactively address changes in the agencies’ geographic community as well as the early childhood education field.  Further, CURL and the agencies will develop broad action plans that begin to answer the two main questions: 1) how does each agency currently fit in the local community and broader field of early childhood education?; 2) how does each agency and the collective group of agencies want to fit into the local community and broader field of early childhood education? The results of these conversations will be brought to the larger inter-agency cohorts to identify mutual points of contact and potential areas for collective action.

Potential Road Blocks

Among the many reasons to extend this initiative, it became clearer that the combination of parent unemployment due to economic instability, rapidly changing communities, and continued struggles to sustain a blended-funding model were, and still are, threats to the organizational health of the agencies. Unfortunately, we did not foresee that the Illinois State budget deficit would soon amplify these stressors and create a road block in continuing one of our initial project goals: to create individual agency action plans. However, as it has been a guiding principle of the initiative to encourage inter-agency dialogue and create a space for collaboration, the agencies continue to support each other through their monthly cohort meetings and utilize their collective wisdom to plan for the coming months, both as individual agencies and as the “CURL 8.”