Mississippi Early Childhood Development Coalition September Updates

OUTREACH EFFORTS

The Mississippi Early Childhood Development Coalition (ECDC) has been hard at work promoting our information line (One Dial Supports a Child: 1-800-241-KIDS), which anyone in the state can call with early childhood-related questions. We also continue to expand the outreach of our Kindergarten Readiness working groups’ messaging around early developmental milestones and screen time guidelines and to promote our training directory, where early childhood educators and families can find training that focus on supporting young children with developmental delays or disabilities. 

This month, the Children’s Foundation of Mississippi shared our materials during outreach events. Additionally, Mississippi Families for Kids shared ECDC materials and information at the (RROC) Relatives Raising Others’ Children Meeting, Johnson Elementary’s PTA event in Jackson, and Help Me Grow Mississippi’s developmental screening event in Gulfport. 

At the Mississippi Department of Education’s THRIVE conference, we shared our materials during a family engagement session with instructional staff, principals, district level administrators, parents, parent liaisons and other education stakeholders from around the state.

On September 12, we presented about the ECDC’s work at Mississippi Public Broadcasting’s event Tiny Tot Toolbox: Think It Through, a hands-on professional learning experience. At the event, we connected early childhood educators with the Mississippi Department of Education, Mississippi Families for Kids’ clinical services and Help Me Grow statewide system, Mississippi Parent Training & Information Center, Families as Allies, and Mississippi Early Childhood Inclusion Center.

The Lafayette County School District is sharing information about our One Dial Supports a Child information line on their livestreams via this 30-second promotional video. 

The coalition’s Kindergarten Readiness working group developed a promotional video this month to spread the word about our training directory.

MAKING CONNECTIONS

This month we connected one of our members to other coalition members who may be interested in collaborating on an upcoming grant proposal. 

Due to sharing information in our K Readiness working group, one of our members from the Lafayette County School District applied for and was chosen to participate in the National Association for the Education of Young Children’s Leadership Cohort. 

MEETING ACTIVITIES

At our September full coalition meeting, we reported on the themes of the recent 20-question survey that our members completed as part of our feedback process. Planning team members posed potential action items to address the feedback that emerged from the survey responses and collected additional feedback from our members. Coalition members will continue to submit feedback on the proposed action items throughout the month. Planning team members will review each piece of feedback and edit proposed action items as necessary before presenting an action plan to the full coalition in October.

The ECDC’s planning team is in the process of identifying action items from our recent retreat report, which we will share with full coalition members in October as well. 

The coalition’s co-chairs completed their transition process this month, with former co-chairs being offboarded and new co-chairs being onboarded. Our outgoing co-chairs will be formally recognized by our new co-chairs at our in-person meeting this October at Lynn Meadows Discovery Center in Gulfport. 

JOIN US TODAY!

Want to become a member of the ECDC? Find out more and join us: https://mffk.org/ecdc/.