EDUCATION

Providing Support for Education

We at the United Way for Clinton County know that the best two opportunities we can offer to kids in our county are high-quality early care and education, and high-quality before and after-school programming.

After School Programs

Aside from their child-care and supervision value, after school programs often provide youth development and skill-building activities that might reduce delinquent behavior. These possibilities and the observation that arrests for juvenile crime peak from 2-6 p.m. on school days have increased interest in the delinquency prevention potential of the programs. The Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Maryland shows research has proven that participation in these programs reduces delinquent behavior for middle-school students, increases positive peer associations, resilience, character modeling, and resourcefulness. They also are one of the most important preventatives of drug use.

With your help, we invested $155,000 in 2017 to after school impact programs that provided high-quality opportunities for kids to grow and become positive ambassadors in our community.

Childhood Development

The CDC states that the immediate and lasting positive effects of quality early care on language, cognitive development, and school achievement has been confirmed by converging studies.

  • Childhood development is an important determinant of health over a person’s lifetime.
  • Early developmental opportunities can provide a foundation for children’s academic success, health, and general well-being.
  • Preschool-aged children experience profound biological brain development and achieve 90 percent of their adult brain volume by age 6. 

This physiological growth allows children to develop functional skills related to information processing, comprehension, language, emotional regulation, and motor skills. Experiences during early childhood affect the structural development of the brain and the neurobiological pathways that determine a child’s functional development.

Positive experiences support children’s cognitive, social, emotional, and physical development, and conversely, adverse experiences can hinder it.

For these reasons, we invested $46,750 in 2016 to provide opportunities for toddlers to cultivate their brain during the most significant period of development their brain ever undergoes.

Partner with us!

We fund 18 programs that help children and their families thrive. These are only two examples of United Way plan to address underlying issues that negatively impact our kids. With your help we can continue to do more.