Hello! Thank you for joining us for our first digital newsletter, The Hillsdale County Great Start Collaborative is excited to bring you current resources for you and your children. We hope you like it!

We need your help!!! Please go to the Hillsdale County Community Facebook page and vote for the Community Baby Shower. The Community Baby Shower has been selected as one of the finalists in the Love Your Community grant offered through the Community Foundation. One of the major factors in the grant award decision will be the support that we receive via Facebook "likes"! These likes must be recorded directly through the Hillsdale County Community Foundation page. Voting is currently open and is open until March 26th! Feel free to share on your own Facebook page with a reminder that the vote only counts if the "like" is done on the Community Foundation page.

https://www.facebook.com/Hillsdale-County-Community-Foundation-105456042855711/

During the month of March, a handful of parents from the Great Start Parent Coalition will be participating in a Strengthening Families Assessment. The parents are going to have the opportunity to give their honest feedback about their involvement in the Great Start Collaborative and Parent Coalition. The feedback from the assessment will be used to improve our efforts here in Hillsdale County.

The Great Start Collaborative has been working hard on their action agenda:

• The Pediatric & Family Health and Community Resources subcommittees have recently combined their efforts to plan the Spring Community Baby Shower. This event will be held on April 21st from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. More details coming soon! We have applied for a Love your Community grant from the Community Foundation, which will allow us to plan ahead for a 2019 Community Baby Shower as well. We are waiting to hear the results.

• The Literacy subcommittee has been ramping up efforts to allow for Book Borrowing Bins to be placed in different community locations. Many parents are involved in the process of reaching out to community agencies, stores and organizations. More to come on those locations in the next newsletter.

• The Child Care subcommittee has efforts in place to educate the community on the importance of high-quality childcare and early learning environments! In addition, efforts are in place to offer training scholarship opportunities to unlicensed child care providers. As unlicensed child care providers take advantage of these educational offerings, not only are they increasing their knowledge and professionalism, they have the ability to increase their Child Development and Care (CDC) reimbursement rate by achieving the Level 2 unlicensed provider status.

We are excited to announce that we have been awarded a second Trusted Advisor Grant from the Michigan Department of Education. This grant will allow the Great Start Collaborative to continue PLAY events in Litchfield, Camden, Reading, and Waldron. Time was built into this grant to allow more efforts to focus on recruitment of families residing in those communities to attend the PLAY events. The grant also includes resources to start and/or expand weekend backpack food programs with many of the local school districts.

Learning to read and write doesn’t start in kindergarten or first grade.

Developing language and literacy skills begins at birth through everyday loving interactions, such as sharing books, telling stories, singing songs and talking to one another. Learn how adults—parents, grandparents, and teachers—play a very important role in preparing young children for future school success and helping them become self-confident and motivated learners. https://www.zerotothree.org/early-learning/early-literacy