COVID Call Series for Funders – 2020

As the COVID-19 pandemic rapidly surfaced urgent needs for young children, their families and laid bare the fragility and inequity of the systems that serve them, ECFC began hosting weekly calls for any interested funder and philanthropy advisors/organizations to share philanthropic responses to COVID-19, and consider together we could meet immediate and long-term needs of our communities.  With a mix of peer sharing and expert presentations, we considered:

• How to support vulnerable families – both economically AND with mental health and prevention resources to nurture resilience during this difficult time;
• How to keep child care providers and other critical family -serving institutions afloat to serve families now and in the future; and
• How to partner with public agencies to ensure that families and providers are covered by and access the additional public resources being made available.

Call topics focused on:

• Early Learning Experiences of Young Children (September 2020), Lori Connors-Tadros, Senior Research Fellow at the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER), joined us to discuss NIEER Special Report: Understanding and responding to the pandemic’s impacts on preschool education: What can we learn from last spring?, August 2020, and Kindergarten Entry Assessments During COVID-19: How are States Adapting? New America
• , Kindergarten Assessments & Pre-K funding trends, featuring the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER). (September 2020)
• The Pandemic’s Disproportionate Impact on Immigrant Children and Families, Co-hosted with the Alliance for Early Success (May 2020)
• Impact of the Pandemic on Families and Young Children: Speakers: Rapid EC Project, Power-PAC Illinois, National Black Child Development Institute (May 2020)
• What’s Next for Child Care – Paths to Sustainable and Equitable Recovery. Speakers: Opportunities Exchange, National Children’s Facilities Network, Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), and Local Income Investment Fund (LIIF) (June 2020)
• COVID-19 Risk in Child Care (November 2020) Walter Gilliam, Professor of Child Psychiatry and Psychology at the Yale University Child Study Center, joined us to discuss Yale University study findings that exposure to child care was not associated with an elevated risk of spreading COVID-19 from children to adults.
• Impact of Media and and Video on Young Children (November 2020) Speakers from Georgetown University Early Learning Project, and the Youth Law Center, joined us to discuss research on video interactions between young children and grandparents; and lessons from systems and settings that rely on video interaction between kids and families even in non-pandemic times (justice facilities, foster care, military families). [Slide Deck] [Screen Sense – What the Research Says About the Impact of Media on Children Under 3 Years Old, Zero to Three] [Georgetown Early Learning Project Video Chat FAQs]

This weekly call series took place April through November, 2020.