Bridge to Success Early Education Program

With the vision of bringing together and helping philanthropist in lending a hand to their respective community, the Silicon Valley Community Foundation expands its early childhood education program with its basic initiative –Bridges to Success.

Bridges to Success, will be implemented in various San Mateo communities respectively; Daly City, East Palo Alto, Half Moon Bay, Menlo Park, Pacifica, Pescadero, Redwood City, San Mateo and South San Francisco.

The program is geared towards school readiness to ease the transition between early childhood and formal schooling with aid of partner institutions. One of them is the Youth and Family Enrichment Services which will work with more than 20 partners including school districts, preschools and other non-profit organizations.

The initiative, Bridges to Success, focuses on the experience of students and parents once moved beyond kindergarten. The program builds on success of another early education initiative at the community foundation –Kickoff to Kindergarten, which has aided 9,000 no preschool experience children from falling behind their peers.

The program will provide early learners with the educational resources and technical assistance to the nine school districts enabling low-income students and students of color can continue the success in the early education level. Such philanthropic educational program will address the problem from the roots –between ages of three and eight–and connect high quality learning from pre-kindergarten trough third grade which is believed to be the child’s turning point regarding early education.

“Bridges to Success allows us to create what some experts have called the next social contract for the primary years of education – one that is defined by a more systematic and coordinated approach to early care and education,” said Erica Wood, vice president of community leadership at the community foundation.

The program will also include parents and caregivers considering their influence in the early stages of learning of a child. Such program will be the latest series of early learning initiatives at the community foundation.