Operations and Family Support
Early childhood education programs play an essential role in creating an ecosystem of support for children and families.
Critically, early education programs represent an opportunity to reach large numbers of families facing adversity effectively and efficiently, representing an environment grounded in trusting and nurturing relationships. Despite this, in Massachusetts and across the United States, early education programs rarely have the staffing or resources required to deliver not only high-quality education and care, but also the full-scope wraparound and health supports that children and families need to thrive. At Neighborhood Villages, we partner with early childhood education programs serving vulnerable children and families to demonstrate the staffing and resources needed to change this narrative, helping them to access the health services, wraparound supports, and material goods they need to thrive.
Winter Wonder Fest: A celebration of community
Winter Wonder Fest is our annual community celebration to bring over 200,000 essential goods, gifts, and joy to more than 1,000 families served through Neighborhood Villages’ programs.
Essential Goods Delivery
Our team provides wrap-around supports to early education programs in Boston and across the Commonwealth to ensure families and centers have the supplies they need to provide the best care possible, including:
Quarterly delivery of diapers and wipes
Annual distribution of backpacks
Books and Toys
Coats, and other seasonal items
Hygiene, and basic care necessities
Other items as needed
Recently Neighborhood Villages has been coordinating the distribution of diapers and wipes across the state of Massachusetts to support our migrant families who are in the midst of transition.
COLORI Playspace Express
Massachusetts and other states across the country are facing an unprecedented crisis in its shelter system with many thousands of families living in shelters across the state. At Neighborhood Villages, we’re seeking to do our part to help. In partnership with Horizons for Homeless Children, Amal Alliance, and the Healey Administration, we are proud to pilot an innovative new mobile early learning initiative that provides children in shelter between the ages of 0-5 access to social-emotional programming and wraparound supports, including connections to Early Intervention and essential goods, in child-friendly, trauma-informed spaces.
Through retrofitting school buses to be trauma-informed, nurturing early learning spaces, our program, the COLORI Playspace Express, brings flexible, mobile, and accessible spaces for child-centered programming that will help more than 1,000 families annually.
Family Navigation and Operations Management
Neighborhood Villages provides our partner early education providers with funded professional staffing positions in Family Navigation and Operations Management, stipends to address pressing needs, and centralized services from sourcing diapers and classroom supplies to helping families connect with health services and food supports.
Family Navigators are trusted partners to families in need, providing high-touch case management services to mitigate crises and ensuring families can access social and health services in the early education and care settings where they and their children are daily. Since 2021, Family Navigators have successfully secured stable housing for over 40 families across our Neighborhood network. According to data from the MA Taxpayers Foundation, this potentially has a cost-savings of $3.9M, by preventing families from entering the state's shelter system, before even considering the high cost of stress placed on families and children experiencing homelessness.
Operations Managers work to build the administrative capacity of our partner early education programs to free up Directors’ time to support staff and program quality. They help with communications, database management, onboarding and scheduling, and enrollment. They build capacity both within and across our partner programs. In partnership with the Neighborhood Villages Early Education Support team, Operations Managers even work to support the distribution of thousands of material goods across programs each year.
Operations Support in the News
Neighborhood Villages is pleased to announce that it has received Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Community Health Impact Funds to support Neighborhood Villages’ work with Ellis Early Learning in Jamaica Plain in piloting a multi-layered, comprehensive behavioral health model for ECE settings that can be scaled across the state.