Early Childhood Development

What we are trying to accomplish

Aloha United Way’s goal is that every child in Hawaii will enter kindergarten with age-appropriate language, literacy and social emotional skills.

How we will know we are succeeding

Each year, Hawaii’s public kindergarten teachers assess the readiness of their entering pupils. We will track the percentage of classrooms that report more than 75% of entering children are ready to learn (according to the Hawaii State School Readiness Assessment).

Actual rates for the past three years are as follows:

2006: 8.3%
2007: 8.0%
2008: 8.4%

For each issue area, Aloha United Way has developed a three-pronged strategy - a funding strategy, a breakthrough strategy and an advocacy strategy.

To review each of our strategies for the Early Childhood Development area, please click one of the links below:

• Funding Strategy - Funding strategies include the funds allocated to community agencies to perform the work that will lead to improve Early Childhood Development for our target populations. The strategy includes the service delivery targets and the actual performance of the funded agencies. Actual performance is updated in March and September of each year.
  
• Breakthrough Strategy - Breakthrough strategies are initiatives proposed by community agencies that include unique or innovative approaches to service delivery. 
  
• Advocacy Strategy - Aloha United Way recognizes that our funding is just a small portion of the dollars available to address the various community conditions we focus on. Adding our voice to government deliberations at all levels is an integral part of our work. Each Impact Council, which consists of a group of community volunteers from all sectors, is responsible for managing one of Aloha United Way's issue areas and will identify advocacy issues which will add to the collective impact of our strategies.