Making Early Childhood Education Pathways Accessible to New Americans
Building Bright Futures has awarded a grant through its Vermont Early Childhood Fund (VECF) to a help a coalition of local partners, organized through Childcare Counts, develop a vocational pathway which weaves together English Language Learning (ELL), vocational training and cultural education. VECF supports creative solutions that will improve the well-being of children (prenatal–age 8), families, and the Vermont communities in which they live. The VECF award was made to the Brattleboro Development Credit Corporation (BDCC) which is acting as project manager.
To launch the project, BDCC is convening Early Childhood Education experts from Northern Lights and the Windham Regional Career Center alongside partners in ELL and cultural learning, Vermont Adult Learning and SIT / World Learning. BDCC manages a range of workforce programs and partnerships day to day and BDCC has also run projects similar to the BBF initiative, helping to align workforce training participants and providers. In 2018 BDCC helped Brattleboro Memorial Hospital and CCV to establish a Medical Assistant training program that continues to run successfully, creating a new medical career pathway for high schoolers, and has supported customer service, manufacturing, and construction training initiatives throughout the region.
The program will help new Vermonters for whom English is a second language, and who want to enter ECE Careers. It will be implemented in partnership with local immigration support organizations. By spring. the program aims to enroll a cohort of refugees and asylum seekers in a “bootcamp” designed to prepare them for work experience and successful completion of educational requirements for the field, such as the Fundamentals for Early Childhood Professionals training, or taking credit-bearing ECE classes at the Community College of Vermont.
About Welcoming Communities
Welcoming Communities is a series of initiatives and collaborative partnerships that seeks to make the region more welcoming for foreign-born workers, and non-citizen residents. It will improve how existing BDCC programs serve diverse stakeholders and launch new targeted activities through partnerships with employers and community-based organizations to help make the region more equitable and inclusive for current and future BIPOC community members. The long-term goal of Welcoming Communities is to build a community and economy that supports immigration and in-migration to southern Vermont to increase the vitality of our communities and strength of our workforce. For more information please visit www.brattleborodevelopment.com
