About Great Start Collaborative
Governance
The Kids Great Start Multi-County Great Start Collaborative is a coalition of community agencies, business partners, faith partners, schools, health care providers, parents and individuals working together to improve programs and services for families with children from birth to age five. The collaborative pledges to be family guided, community based, nonpartisan, use evidence based strategies with measurable results and accountability to the community. The Great Start Collaborative has been a grantee of the Early Childhood Investment Corporation with COOR Intermediate School District as the fiduciary since October 1, 2008. The office is located in the Career and Technical Education Office of COOR Intermediate School District, located at Kirtland Community College, 11051 North Saint Helen Road, Roscommon Michigan.
Background
Each year too many Michigan children enter kindergarten with previously unidentified health, social-emotional or learning problems. Parents of young children, across Michigan, lack easy access to information and resources in their communities that can help them in their role as their child’s first and most important teachers. Research studies have demonstrated that necessary investment in the first five years of life pays high dividends both to the public and to the individual. In fact, for each dollar spent before age five, realizes a $17.00 rate of return through increased success in high school, higher earning employment opportunities, and a decreased likelihood of incarceration. ECIC was formed in August of 2005 after Governor Granholm called for its creation during her State of the State Speech earlier in the year.
The Early Childhood Investment Corporation (ECIC) was created to assure that every young child in Michigan has a Great Start and arrives at the kindergarten door healthy and ready to succeed in school, with parents who are committed to educational achievement. Accomplishing this important goal is not the work of any one organization or individual but will take the combined efforts of parents, community leaders, business, the legislature, state and local government, faith-based organizations, and philanthropy. The ECIC is uniquely positioned as a public corporation to bring these leaders together on behalf of a better life for Michigan’s youngest citizens and their parents.
The ECIC provides funds for community leaders to work together, as members of a Great Start Collaborative, to create the kinds of helpful information, services and resources that parents want and need. The ECIC provides training and consultation to community leaders about what works to improve the heath, development, and learning of young children. The ECIC seeks to bring together information about child, family and community needs, to educate and advocate for policy changes that assure the most efficient and effective use of all financial resources.
The ECIC can solicit and receive funds from both the public and private sectors of the economy. The ECIC has an independent Board of Directors, composed of leaders from state government, philanthropy, business, community and early childhood organizations, healthcare, and communities.
The ECIC is committed to funding Great Start Collaboratives throughout Michigan, so that every Michigan child can reach his or her greatest potential and be a contributing, productive member of Michigan’s workforce of the future.
Current:
The goal of each GSC/GSFC is to ensure the coordination and expansion of local early childhood infrastructure and programs that allow every child in the community to achieve the early childhood outcomes:
Outcome 1: Children born healthy.
Outcome 2: Children healthy, thriving, and developmentally on track from birth to third grade.
Outcome 3: Children developmentally ready to succeed in school at the time of school entry.
Outcome 4: Children prepared to succeed in fourth grade and beyond by reading proficiently by the end of third grade.
Highly effective GSCs and GSFCs work together to build and strengthen the local early childhood system to achieve better outcomes for young children and their families. To achieve these outcomes, each local Great Start system must include supports for children birth through age eight in physical health, social-emotional health, family supports and basic needs, parent education, and early education and care.
This program is funded through a grant provided by the Michigan Department of Lifelong Education, Advancement and Potential.
The materials are funded through a grant provided by the Michigan Department of Lifelong Education, Advancement, and Potential.
