The Polk County Early Childhood Iowa Board is reviewing applications for funding for fiscal year 2017 (July 1, 2016 – June 30, 2017). Programs in Polk County serving children ages 0-5 and their families are encouraged to apply. Application deadline is March 21, 2016.

Interested programs must demonstrate positive outcomes in one or more of these priority areas identified in the Polk County ECI Community Plan:

• Healthy Children
• Children Ready to Succeed in School
• Safe and Supportive Communities
• Secure and Nurturing Families
• Secure and Nurturing Early Learning Environments

Organizations interested in applying for funding should contact:

Barb Bremner
Executive Director
Polk County Early Childhood Iowa
1111 9th Street, Suite 100
Des Moines, IA 50314
515-246-6531

bbremner@unitedwaydm.org

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Mark Your Calendar for the first Heartland Child Policy Forum

The Child and Family Policy Center is convening the first “Heartland Child Policy Forum” to highlight the current status of the Midwest’s youngest children and the need for policy makers at federal and state levels to address their needs.

The forum will feature a keynote address by Michael Burke, vice president of the Buffett Early Childhood Fund, an Omaha-based organization dedicated to promoting evidenced-base public and private investments in young children. Mr. Burke is a communications expert in conveying research to policy makers and opinion leaders.

In addition, Des Moines Register editor Carol Hunter will moderate a panel of policy makers and advocates who will discuss President Obama’s proposal to invest $10 billion annually in preschool and early-childhood programs and the current level of attention to young children in the country’s political dialogue.

The forum is a kick-off of a gathering of child advocacy leaders from the Heartland states—Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, South Dakota and Wisconsin—who are active at their state capitols in advancing early-childhood agendas.

The event is sponsored by the Early Childhood Funders Collaborative, a group of national and regional foundations committed to increasing effective investments to ensure all children start school healthy and prepared for success.

The forum is free, but pre-registration at www.cfpciowa.org is requested.

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Healthy Birth Day, a local nonprofit with a Count the Kicks public health campaign is holding a launch party for its new mobile Count The Kicks App. The party will begin at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at the World Food Prize Hall of Laureates, 100 Locust St.

Healthy Birth Day was founded by five Central Iowa  women, including state senator Janet Petersen, after each of them lost daughters to stillbirth or infant death in 2003. In addition to getting Iowa’s Stillbirth Registry law enacted and creating a parent-to-parent network for  families immediately following the loss of their babies, Healthy Birth Day – which is almost completely operated by volunteers – also launched Count the Kicks. The campaign encourages women to monitor their baby’s movements in the third trimester of pregnancy. Founders modeled Count the Kicks on a campaign in Norway that reduced stillbirths. In Iowa, 234 fetal deaths were recorded in 2006. As of 2012, that number dropped to 174.

Find out more: Healthy Birth Day

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Business leaders from 35 major firms demonstrated their support of federal early childhood investments by signing a statement published in POLITICO (Sept. 17). Signatories represent firms across key economic sectors, including Procter & Gamble, Macy’s, PNC, Ecolab, UPS, American Electric Power, and Capital One. The statement says early childhood is critical to developing the workforce the nation requires to remain competitive in the global economy, stresses this is a nonpartisan issue, and calls on all parties in Congress to come together to take action. Click here to view the statement.

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