Giving

Reasons to Support Early Childhood Education in Your Community

Access to a quality early childhood education ensures even the most disadvantaged children can succeed in school and in life.

How? Well, wisdom teaches us that if you give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day, but if you teach him to fish, he’ll eat for a lifetime. That’s the power of education, and it has the greatest impact during a child’s formative years.

- A child’s brain develops by 85% during the first five years of life. So, learning patterns established before kindergarten significantly affect a child’s learning capacity.
- By the age of four, children from lower-income families hear 30 million fewer words than their higher-income counterparts, impacting language fluency as well as educational and career success.
- At-risk children without access to a high-quality early childhood education are 60% less likely to attend college.
- High-quality early childhood programs can lead to a 65% reduction in lifetime violent crime, a 40% reduction in lifetime arrest, and a 20% reduction in unemployment.
- High-quality, birth-to-5 programs for disadvantaged children can deliver a 13% return on investment.*

As you can see, Kindergarten is too late to start. You can make a positive impact in Southwest Florida by giving our students the building blocks of a better future. We’d love to take you on a tour of one of our child care centers!

*Heckman, James J. (2016). The Lifecycle Benefits of an Early Childhood Education