ECC Giving Opportunities
An Invitation
You are cordially invited to join us in supporting the new Early Childhood Center at Colorado State University. We are delighted to tell you about the exciting future of our Center which is being relocated to a new home in August of 2012. With the generous support of CSU students, we recently purchased the historic Washington School facility at 232 S. Shields. We are now fundraising to renovate and furnish the facility, to make it the state-of-the-art facility our children and students deserve. Your support and donations are critical and deeply appreciated.
An Investment for Our Community and Beyond
To support the promise of tomorrow’s youth, it is critically important to train professionals using evidence-based best practices in the care and education of young children. As a lab school, the CSU Early Childhood Center does just that. A high quality lab school is a community asset that provides much more than simply childcare: It is an investment the future.
A wealth of data suggests that early investments in children’s health, education and well-being reduce societal costs in later years. These data are especially compelling for children from disadvantaged and vulnerable circumstances, such as those from low-income backgrounds.
A Bit of History
The CSU Early Childhood Center (ECC) has been in existence for nearly 80 years, training university students as early childhood professionals and providing state-of-the-art care and education to preschoolers. The ECC is also an arena for cutting edge multi-disciplinary research about child development and the systems of care and education that facilitate optimal development. Accredited through the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), the ECC has an outstanding local and national reputation.
The ECC has been housed for many years on the CSU campus, in an academic building with limited space and limited opportunity for expansion that would model best practices in university lab schools. Despite space limitations, the ECC currently serves about 80 families and provides learning experiences for some 500 students annually. The client population of the ECC is purposefully diverse and includes families from all walks of life – single-parent students, two-parent working families, families on child-care assistance, international families, and so on.
A “New” Home for Future Generations of Families and Students
We are currently expanding the ECC through the purchase of a 17,000 ft2 historic elementary school, the Washington School, which is being closed by the local school district.
In addition to increasing the number of slots, our expansion also includes broadening the age group we serve. We are currently a preschool-only program (ages 2 ½ to 5 ½), but with our new and improved space we will also be able to provide much needed infant and toddler child programming. To date, $1.4M has been secured to purchase the building, and begin a Phase I renovation that will allow the ECC to provide care for some 150 children (representing about 100 full-time slots).
We are unbelievably excited about this opportunity to expand our program and increase the capacity of both children served, and students educated.
We ask for your support in joining us on our mission as a flagship university-based lab school for promoting the education, care, and well-being of our most valuable and vulnerable resource: our children.
