Improve Alignment / Network Updates July 2024

Community Driven Alignment and Expansion of Supports for Young Keiki

Early Childhood Continuums

The Waimānalo Early Education ‘Upena (Waimānalo, O‘ahu) and the Pāhoa Promise Partnership (Pāhoa, Hawai‘i) bring together health care providers, family support services, public, public charter, and independent school pre-k12 education leaders, early childhood educators, and families and community members to create stronger developmental pathway for all keiki so that they reach kindergarten healthy, safe and ready to thrive in school.

• Each community is now mid-way into their second year of efforts.

• Early Childhood Action Strategy has hired Megan Yarberry as a backbone staff member to help guide ECAS efforts in support of the early childhood continuum effort.

• This summer the Pāhoa Partnership is focused on helping families with young children get ready for kindergarten and to help prevent the summer slide associated with a long summer break.

• Pāhoa Promise partners have responded to the $1.4M requests for proposals released by Hawai‘i County Government to support the continued development of the continuum effort in Pāhoa, and to implement a full continuum of early childhood supports under the banner: Pāhoa Reads.

Key learnings from the initiative to date include:

✓ An accurate assessment of community readiness must also include an understanding of the community’s baseline understanding of early childhood development.

✓ The discovery process can be uneven and likely will take time to sort through.

✓ Centering community priorities and definitions of impact means supporting the exploration of local needs at the community’s pace.

✓ Transitioning from design to implementation and scaling may also mean building and implementing key components of systems change.

Invoking the traditional practices of caring for and protecting the waterways of Hawai‘i, The Pāhoa Promise partnership has conceptualized the sequence of linked supports that are part of the continuum effort that their community has developed over the past 18 months as an ‘Auwai of support for young keiki. Pāhoa Promise partnership core team members recently shared their ‘Auwai vision with staff members in Representative Jill Tokuda’s congressional office.

Read more Updates on Systems Change Efforts within in the network.