By Juli Metzger—
MUNCIE, IN—Research shows 90 percent of brain development occurs within the first five years of life. It’s one reason why early childhood engagements like play matters.
That’s just one statistic that is driving the local Cradle to Career Muncie support network, a national movement that has emerged locally. C2CMuncie is made up of 9 Collaborative Action Networks each led by a local nonprofit, whose cross-sector team members focus on a timeline that goes from pre-kindergarten to career. These agencies and their teams have worked for more than two years to break down the data and plan a course of action that prepares children and families for early childhood learning through school and onto a post high school experience including on-the-job training and fulltime, livable wage employment.
Supported by the George and Frances Ball Foundation, the next step in this movement is providing information in a unique messaging campaign that focuses on local faces as model families, demonstrating techniques that give children a leg up on life.
In fact, local families are the inspiration behind the advertising campaign that hit Muncie billboards in key neighborhoods and MITS bus advertising this month. Nearly 50 family members participated in a “casting call” in September to identify local faces to represent the local work behind Cradle to Career Muncie.
The campaign promotes reading, dreaming and doing.
Ball State University’s McKinley Avenue Agency developed the artful signage that is meant to show families – and their children – why dreaming and doing sets them on a pathway for success in school, careers and life. The college students represent the end of the cradle to career continuum, as they get real-world experience that prepares them for the career ahead of them.
Muncie families appear on billboards, transit advertising, and posters in community gathering places like schools, churches and coffee shops. A social media and digital marketing campaign will kick off next year.
“When I heard about the casting call, I wanted my family to be a part of it,” said Linzi Rodgers, mother of two and Director of Community Education and Workforce Collaboration at Ivy Tech Community College. “I want my community to see people who look like them celebrated for engaging with their kids in positive ways.”
In Muncie, challenges like chronic absenteeism from school hinder a child’s progress.
Rodgers leads the Postsecondary Success Collaborative Action Network in the initiative. “I have the opportunity to be engaged with other community leaders to ensure our children successfully obtain some sort of credential or degree after high school,” she said.
“We know we have work to do to help more families focus on the work of raising healthy, focused kids. I see the campaign helping to doing that,” Rodgers said.
There is a moment between the third and fourth grade when children migrate from a “learn to read” phase to a “read to learn” phase, yet another reason adults interacting with children matter.
Families and Cradle to Career Muncie leaders gathered at Ross Community Center on Dec. 11 where The George and Frances Ball Foundation unveiled the Cradle to Career Muncie campaign and celebrated the initiative’s new community ambassadors.
“There are so many role models in our community, doing the work in after-school settings, at kitchen tables in homes and on neighborhood play yards. We wanted to showcase those committed families and, hopefully, inspire more to do what they do – have fun with their children and know they’re paving a path of success for them,” said Thomas Kinghorn, President and CEO of the George and Frances Ball Foundation.
