Children are the future and they need to be guided early in life, so they grow up to be well-rounded individuals who are capable of making lasting contributions to society.

First Chance for Children is a program that builds an early educational system to help children in kindergarten  succeed. This program was started because many children start kindergarten far behind the rest of their peers  and because of that,  they become at risk for facing lifetime challenges.

These challenges include but are not limited to  lower higher school graduation rates, more criminal convictions, higher teen pregnancy rates and lower earnings.

First Chance’s goal is for every child to arrive at school with social, emotional and academic skills that are needed to succeed both in school and in the real world.

With this goal, First Chance has four main objectives: to increase the quality of early childhood programs, to increase access to quality early childhood programs for high risk families, to increase parent and public awareness about early education and to increase county-wide community support for early childhood issues.

Along with these goals, First Chance confronts the challenges of the school readiness gap by advocating public policies which help  children arrive at school ready to succeed, mentoring low income parents, helping caregivers improve quality, raising public awareness of the importance of early childhood education, brining stakeholders and civic leaders together and preventing SIDS and child abuse with safe cribs and home visits.

Safe cribs is one of the programs that First Chance offers that provides safe cribs for low income families who lack safe sleeping accommodations for their babies. The cribs include a baby bag that has home safety items included, such as a smoke detector and tub thermometer.

After the delivery of the materials, there are five additional home visits that focus on child abuse and prevention and child development.

All these different programs within First Chance don’t come free, so funding is necessary. Each activity was made possible by a combination of grants, in kind contributions and private donations.

For further information on contributions and additional help, please visit www.firstchanceforchildren.org.