In celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month (Sept. 15 – Oct. 15), Communities in Schools of Atlanta is proud to feature a guest column from Jonathan Peraza Campos, site coordinator at Cross Keys High School in DeKalb County. Georgia is one of 12 states in the union with at least 1 million residents of Latin American […]
Category: Securing Atlanta’s Future
Atlanta is currently experiencing a period of incredible growth and transformation. During this time, it is imperative that we remain committed to caring for our most vulnerable citizens, children. Creating and sustaining an environment where children thrive means actively working to support all aspects of their healthy development. Organizations likeGEEARS: Georgia Early Education Alliance for Ready Students, Junior League of Atlanta, Sheltering Arms, and Communities in Schools Atlanta, are dedicated to promoting and investing in programs that provide high-quality early learning, wrap around supports for children and their families, and community engagement that facilitates the strengthening of Atlanta’s communities, thus securing a successful future for all. Join us weekly as we examine some of the most pressing issues children and families face. We’ll explore potential solutions and discuss steps we are currently taking to address these obstacles.
GEEARS: (Logo attached above) Georgia Early Education Alliance for Ready Students works throughout Georgia to improve public policy, increase public awareness, conduct and interpret research, and lead a movement to support high-quality early education and healthy development for children birth to five. Our vision is that by 2020, every child in Georgia will enter kindergarten prepared to succeed and on a path to read to learn by the end of the third grade. GEEARS’ is based in Atlanta. For more information, visit www.geears.org.
Sheltering Arms: (Logo attached in this email)
Sheltering Arms provides high‐quality early education, child care and comprehensive family support services to more than 3,500 children and their families annually at 14 metropolitan Atlanta locations in Cobb, DeKalb, Douglas, Fulton and Gwinnett counties.
Junior League of Atlanta (JLA): (Logo attached below) The Junior League of Atlanta, Inc. (JLA) is an organization of women, committed to making lasting transformation in the Atlanta community. The 100 year legacy of leadership is built on our ability to train women leaders to tackle tough issues impacting women and children, and provides a strong foundation for civic leadership.
Communities in Schools (CIS): (logo attached in this email)
CIS of Atlanta empowers youth in the greater Atlanta area to reach their fullest potential through a wide range of services. CIS places dedicated staff members called Site Coordinators in local schools where they build strong relationships with students, parents, educators and community members.
Posted inThought Leadership
Education is one of JLA’s Focus Areas to Serve the Community
By Yvette T. Dupree, Ph.D., Operations Consultant and Volunteer for Internal Operations Council, The Junior League of Atlanta, Inc. Literacy starts before a child meets their first teacher. This is why talking, reading and singing with young children at home is crucial; it forms the connections in their brains that help build literacy skills (American Academy […]
Posted inThought Leadership
Equity in Early Childhood Education: Is Atlanta a Tale of Two Cities?
By Blythe Keeler Robinson, President and CEO, Sheltering Arms In high school I had to read “A Tale of Two Cities” by Charles Dickens. It begins with a memorable first sentence that captures the current state of affairs in our country, our state and more specifically, our city, as we grapple with a global pandemic […]
Posted inSecuring Atlanta's Future, Thought Leadership
Children Should Not Go Hungry When Classrooms Close
By Katie Landes, Director, Georgia Statewide Afterschool Network & Mindy Binderman, Executive Director, GEEARS: Georgia Early Education Alliance for Ready Students Imagine facing the day with a grumbling belly and an empty refrigerator. And imagine if you’re a young child, missing your teachers and friends while struggling to focus on a computer screen. That is the situation facing many children in Atlanta right now, as bureaucratic barriers have made the delivery of food […]
Posted inThought Leadership
Education During COVID-19: Recover, Re-engage, Reimagine
Featured Image: CIS of Atlanta Site Coordinator Toriano Parker works closely with students at Creekside High School in Fulton County to support their academic journey and to thrive in spite of the pandemic. By Dorothy Styles In times of natural disasters, we rely on organizations like FEMA or the Red Cross to respond to emergencies […]
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JLA Grants Provides Relief Through PPE and Other Needs to Local Healthcare Systems
By LeKeisha D. Jackson, Ph.D., Peachtree Papers Editor, The Junior League of Atlanta, Inc. Service remains at the heart of The Junior League of Atlanta, Inc. (JLA) amid these unprecedented circumstances. As the world experiences the pandemic’s strain on the public’s health and healthcare systems, JLA sought to fill the gap through supporting local hospitals through philanthropic efforts. […]
Posted inThought Leadership
Back to School: Through a Different Lens
By Blythe Keeler Robinson, President and CEO, Sheltering Arms “Education either functions as an instrument, which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity, or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with […]
Posted inThought Leadership
In a Pandemic, Need Remains for Routine Vaccinations
By GEEARS: Georgia Early Education Alliance for Ready Students Normally at this time of year, parents of young children would be preparing for the start of the school year. They might be shopping to the back-to-school sales, or simply easing their young ones out of their summer routines to prepare to meet their new teachers and classmates. But these are […]
Posted inThought Leadership
Standing in the Gap
By Eric White Summer is typically filled with so many fond memories: Sun-filled family vacations, delicious backyard barbeques, and sleeping in after long nights of laughter with friends, The summer of 2020 is one I’ll never forget. Instead of taking my usual two-month break, I was asked to stay on in my role as a […]
Posted inThought Leadership
JLA Emphasizes Early Childhood Education to Mobilize Community Impact
By Christine Brodnan, Advocacy and Initiatives Vice President, The Junior League of Atlanta, Inc. The Junior League of Atlanta, Inc. (JLA) prioritizes Early Childhood Education (ECE) as one of its three primary Community Impact areas. JLA has an extensive history of both direct community work and advocacy within Atlanta’s ECE efforts. From founding the Atlanta Speech […]
Posted inThought Leadership
Combatting Learning Loss During a Pandemic
By Blythe Keeler Robinson, President and CEO, Sheltering Arms It’s been a year like no other. In the midst of a global pandemic, child care centers and schools across the country shut their doors with three months left in the school year. Although everyone’s circumstance is different, families and educators alike have done their best […]
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Mayor’s Summer Reading Club More Important Than Ever
By Georgia Early Education Alliance for Ready Students Uncertain. Unprecedented. Unsettled. No matter how one might describe the times in which we live, one thing is for sure: our youngest Georgians are living through a summer unlike any we’ve seen in recent history. With schools closed since March, and many caregivers having to take on teaching duties on top of their […]
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Pandemic Unearths Gaps in Education, Equality
By Frank Brown, Esq. Parents, teachers, students, faculty, and support staff, we’ve officially survived our first online-only semester of learning. But, what was the cost of such a dramatic shift for educators and pupils alike? Closing the academic achievement gap is an incredible task in ordinary circumstances. A global pandemic disproportionately killing Black Americans has […]
Posted inThought Leadership
JLA Pivots during Covid19 Pandemic to Better Serve the Community
By Bre West, President, The Junior League of Atlanta, Inc. For the first time in more than 100 years, people worldwide are painstakingly adjusting to a new reality as we emerge from self-isolation in a “semi” post-quarantine era. Many of us are reeling as we try to put food on the table, maintain flexible employment […]
Posted inThought Leadership
The Time for Change: Equity and Justice for All
By Blythe Keeler Robinson, President and CEO, Sheltering Arms During the past week, we’ve watched as Atlanta and other cities across the nation erupted in protests and civil unrest after witnessing repeated displays of racial violence and injustice. We’ve read Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms’ opinion piece in The New York Times as she echoed […]
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Guarding Our Children’s Future
By Georgia Early Education Alliance for Ready Students, (GEEARS) Imagine a scenario in which the state of Georgia decided that in order to balance the budget, several thousand students could no longer attend third grade. And what if this happened even though the state had a pool of funds ready to be tapped into to avoid these cuts in the first place? Sounds […]
Posted inThought Leadership
Preparing Graduates for a Brighter Future
By Frank Brown, Esq It’s no secret the past couple of months have been challenging for students, parents, and educators. Even so, at CIS of Atlanta, there are stories of hope amidst the chaos. Our site coordinators have been diligent in ensuring children have access to online learning tools and other resources to finish the […]
Posted inThought Leadership
JLA’s Centennial Grants Creates Transformative Community Change
Foreword by Andrea N. Smith, President of The Junior League of Atlanta, Inc. When The Junior League of Atlanta, Inc. (JLA) celebrated its 100 years of service to the Atlanta community in 2017, it awarded three grants worth a total of $1 million to Atlanta nonprofits. The goal was for these grants to be transformational, […]
Posted inThought Leadership
Georgia Has Reopened: Are Child Care Providers Ready?
Blythe Keeler Robinson, President and CEO, Sheltering Arms As of May 1, Georgia’s shelter-in-place order is lifted and the state has begun reopening. Now, parents are heading back to work, and the demand for child care is expected to increase. Since the outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19), child care centers have had to figure out […]
Posted inThought Leadership
Keeping Our Promise to Atlanta’s Children
By GEEARS: Georgia Early Education Alliance for Ready Students When the Promise All Atlanta Children Thrive (PAACT) citywide alliance launched last year, we obviously had no idea what challenges would be in store for all of us 2020. GEEARS: Georgia Early Education Alliance for Georgia originally convened a group of community leaders from the public and private sector to examine the data, develop a strategic vision, and to […]
