Category: News release

(Greensboro, N.C., July 17, 2023) – In Guilford County, 45 out of 5,927 babies born in 2020 did not survive their first year. Shockingly, Black infants accounted for 60 percent of these deaths, revealing significant racial disparities. Guilford County’s infant mortality rate is nearly 10 percent higher than the state average and 34 percent higher than the national average.

To address these concerning statistics, Ready for School, Ready for Life (Ready Ready) has awarded Every Baby Guilford nearly $38,000 to establish a countywide doula program. The grant will enable Every Baby Guilford to provide trained doula care to expectant parents, aiming to reduce the high infant mortality rates in Guilford County.

Charrise Hart, CEO of Ready Ready, expressed enthusiasm for the countywide initiative, stating, “Ready Ready collaborates with and supports community partners to create a comprehensive system of care for Guilford County’s youngest children and their families. We are proud to support Every Baby Guilford’s goal of reducing infant mortality disparities by 50 percent within the next three years. Funding the countywide doula program, which focuses on promoting healthy minority pregnancies and births, plays a critical role in achieving this objective.”

Every Baby Guilford will hire a doula coordinator and contract with five doulas who have received evidence-based training and certification. Together, they will provide prenatal, birthing, and postpartum support to 60 expectant families. Additionally, the doulas will collaborate with the YWCAs in Greensboro and High Point to offer support to pregnant individuals of color participating in home-visiting programs.

“We are grateful for Ready Ready’s financial support,” said Every Baby Guilford Executive Director Jean Workman. “This funding will enhance our countywide doula program, ensuring sustainable support for mothers and birthing individuals, regardless of their ability to pay. Additionally, the funds will facilitate the establishment of a learning collaborative, offering doulas valuable education and business support through mentorship.”

“Every child deserves a great start in life, but not every child starts from the same place,” added Hart. “By supporting children from the prenatal stage to age 8 through partnerships like Every Baby Guilford, we aim to provide Guilford County families with the necessary resources, information, and support to thrive, prepare for kindergarten, and achieve success in school by the third grade.”

Media Contact: Stephanie Skordas, stephanies@getreadyguilford.org

Ready for School, Ready for Life (Ready Ready) staff members have graduated from Guilford County leadership programs.

Network Engagement Specialist Felicia Evans and Director of Communications Stephanie Skordas graduated from the Other Voices program on May 1, 2023.

Other Voices Diversity Leadership is the signature diversity, equity, and inclusion program of the Greensboro Chamber of Commerce. The community-building curriculum brings together individuals from all life experiences to engage in frank and open dialogue to build insight and understanding of the roots of prejudice. The Class of 2023 attended monthly program meetings from September 2022 through April 2023 and is the 30th cohort to graduate from this program.

Family Engagement Manager Yuri Alston graduated from Leadership Greensboro on May 10, 2023.

Leadership Greensboro aims to create a community of leaders committed to inclusivity and collaboration. It is a unique three-part development program that looks to education, volunteer leadership, and alumni engagement to guide participants’ leadership skills over the nine-month curriculum. Each year, a diverse cohort of 45 leaders from public, private, and nonprofit sectors explore essential issues in the community.

(Greensboro, N.C., May 12, 2023) – Ready for School, Ready for Life (Ready Ready) has received a $100,000 grant from The Leon Levine Foundation (TLLF). The grant will provide general support for Ready Ready’s mission to build a connected, innovative system of care for Guilford County’s youngest children and their families.

“Ready, Ready is a collaborative, innovative organization that we are thrilled to be in partnership with as they work to drive population-level change for Guilford County families,” said Gillian Small, program officer at The Leon Levine Foundation.

“We are grateful for The Leon Levine Foundation’s renewed grant,” said Ready Ready CEO Charrise Hart. “TLLF’s support has been important to our organization’s growth and implementation of the first phase of our work for children ages 0-3 and their healthy development. Now we are in the second phase, developing strategies for children ages 3-8 to bolster their transition to kindergarten and find success in school by third grade.”

Third-grade success is the number one indicator of high school graduation and future education or workplace goals.

Research shows that 80 percent of a child’s brain grows during their first three years of life, with a million neural connections forming every second. Creating a strong brain foundation in the first 2,000 days of a child’s life — from birth to kindergarten — is critical to emotional, physical, and cognitive well-being.

“Every child deserves a great start in life, but not every child starts from the same place,” Hart said. “Ready Ready wants every child born in Guilford County in 2023 and beyond to have the resources their families need to thrive. This grant from The Leon Levine Foundation will greatly aid our mission.”

About Ready for School, Ready for Life
Ready for School, Ready for Life (Ready Ready) is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization working to create a connected, innovative system of care for Guilford County’s youngest children and their families. Learn more at www.GetReadyGuilford.org.

About The Leon Levine Foundation
Established in 1980 by Leon Levine (Founder and Chairman Emeritus of Family Dollar Stores, Inc.), The Leon Levine Foundation supports programs and organizations that improve the human condition through investments in education, healthcare, human services and Jewish values. Based in Charlotte, N.C., the Foundation invests in nonprofits across North Carolina and South Carolina with strong leadership, a track record of success, and a plan for financial sustainability. Through its investments, the Foundation intends to create pathways to self-sufficiency, champion strategies for permanent change, and facilitate opportunities for growth.

(Greensboro, N.C., January 27, 2023) – Ready for School, Ready for Life (Ready Ready) has received a $50,000 grant from Pritzker Children’s Initiative. The grant will create a plan to share Ready Ready’s core approaches, strategies, and lessons learned with other North Carolina communities and states developing a comprehensive prenatal-to-three system.

“While Ready Ready is building a system of care for young children and their families in Guilford County, we have always planned to share our unique work and impact across North Carolina. It’s a population-level change movement that started in Guilford County but won’t end here,” Ready Ready CEO Charrise Hart said. “We are so grateful that Pritzker Children’s Initiative will enable more communities to create a comprehensive and high-quality prenatal-to-three system.”

Research shows that 80 percent of a child’s brain grows during their first three years of life, with a million neural connections forming every second. Creating a strong brain foundation in the first 2,000 days of a child’s life — from birth to kindergarten — is critical to emotional, physical, and cognitive well-being.

“Every child deserves a great start in life, but not every child starts from the same place,” Hart said. “Ready Ready wants every child born in Guilford County 2023 and beyond to have the resources their families need to thrive.”

By partnering with families through the critical early stages of childhood, Ready Ready and its community partners seek to understand and address the systemic challenges that impact families in our community, supporting young children’s early cognitive, emotional, and behavioral development.

These resources supplement the care provided by medical practitioners, address gaps in healthy childhood environments, and add support beyond the love and attention of primary caregivers.

Media contact: Director of Communications Stephanie Skordas — stephanies@getreadyguilford.org

(Greensboro, N.C., October 13, 2022) – Ready for School, Ready for Life (Ready Ready) has selected community partners to pilot strategies focused on families with children ages 3-5 in Guilford County. A design team of diverse community stakeholders from Guilford County developed ten strategies designed to improve services for these children and their families. Three strategies will be piloted starting this month:

●      Implement a countywide active reading effort to improve children’s early literacy skills.

●      Improve adult and children’s social-emotional development by expanding evidence-based interventions.

●      Enhance the pre-K to kindergarten transition.

“We are excited to recognize our community partners as we add strategies for families with children ages 3-5 to our system-building work,” said Ready Ready CEO Charrise Hart. “By focusing on early literacy, the transition to kindergarten, and mental health for social-emotional development, we are building on the impact we’ve created by assessing needs for families with children prenatal to age 3. We want every child born in Guilford County in 2023 and beyond to enter kindergarten on track and find success in school by third grade, which is a critical milestone for their future.”

Ready Ready has selected these evidence-based programs and partner agencies for this important work:

Reading Connections will implement the Motheread/Fatheread curriculum with parents and caregivers who are strengthening their own literacy skills. This curriculum creates literacy-rich home environments and encourages shared reading between adults and children.

The United Way of Greater Greensboro will offer Raising a Reader through a collaboration with Guilford County School’s North Carolina Pre-kindergarten classrooms. Lessons learned from the pilot in the 2022-23 school year will inform the expansion of the program countywide to additional early childhood classrooms.

The Kellin Foundation will facilitate the Community Resiliency Model (CRM). This intervention can be used with families and other professionals, such as early childhood educators, to promote awareness of stress triggers and teach skills that can manage emotional reactions. There is a specific focus on the impact of trauma when implementing strategies to promote healthy reactions to stress.

Family Service of the Piedmont will implement Triple P – Positive Parenting Program – in one of Guilford County’s census tracts in High Point with high rates of poverty. Triple P offers a range of supports for families, ranging from general parenting education to interventions for specific social-emotional challenges children may experience.

The YWCA-High Point will conduct work with Parents as Teachers to enhance parent and caregiver skills around social-emotional development through home visits and group activities. By reaching families in the home, parent educators are able to provide support and education to families with a specific focus on preparing for kindergarten entry.

The research is clear – positive experiences earlier in life help children build a strong foundation and grow into socially and emotionally healthy kids who are confident and empathetic. Positive experiences early in children’s lives promote healthy physical development throughout the body. Negative experiences early in life can lead to long-term health problems such as high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, obesity, and mental health challenges.

“As a backbone organization, Ready Ready works with experienced community partners and evidence-based programs to expand and integrate services like these with the goal of ensuring more Guilford County families have access,” Hart said. “We are building a connected, innovative system of care to support families and their children from the very beginning. We cannot expect a healthier, more resilient, more prosperous community if we don’t invest in our future.”

About Ready for School, Ready for Life

Ready for School, Ready for Life (Ready Ready) is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization working to create a connected, innovative system of care for Guilford County’s youngest children and their families. Our goal is to build a replicable model to share across North Carolina and other states. Learn more at www.GetReadyGuilford.org.

Media contact: Stephanie Skordas, stephanies@getreadyguilford.org.

(Greensboro, N.C., May 12, 2022) – Ready for School, Ready for Life (Ready Ready) has received a $50,000 grant from the Pritzker Children’s Initiative to support the organization’s three-year Equity Action Plan. The implementation of this plan will ensure consistent, equitable practices across the organization.

Ready Ready’s mission is to create a connected, innovative system of care for our community’s youngest children and families while eliminating racial disparities. We know that racial disparity is a driving force in the negative outcomes families experience in health, education, and their overall well-being. Core values at Ready Ready include a commitment to being family-led, equity-driven, and inclusive and responsive to evidence.

“Through the continued partnership with the Pritzker Children’s Initiative, Ready Ready aims to move our racial equity work from design to implementation and become a model for other organizations in North Carolina and the nation to follow,” said Charrise Hart, Ready Ready’s chief executive officer.

Ready Ready’s Equity Action Plan includes strategies to build a culture of belonging and deepening equitable family engagement in Ready Ready as well as the development of a plan and set of practices to engage partners in Ready Ready’s racial equity work. This, combined with strategies to lead ongoing conversations around equity issues with staff, parents, committees, and board, will support the shift of power to families.

“At Ready Ready, we know that to achieve population-level change and eliminate disparities, we must be intentional in our racial equity work,” said Heather Adams, interim vice president of public will building. “Racial disparities persist and result in poor outcomes for far too many families in Guilford County. Implementation of our Equity Action Plan is core to our mission and to the success of this system of care for Guilford County families.”

The Equity Action Plan builds on a previous Pritzker Children’s Initiative grant that enabled Ready Ready to deliver racial equity training to all levels of our organization and develop an Equity Statement.

 Media contact: Stephanie Skordas, Director of Marketing and Communications

(Greensboro, N.C., May 12, 2022) – Ready for School, Ready for Life (Ready Ready) is honored to receive a $25,000 grant from the Lincoln Financial Foundation to promote early literacy and kindergarten readiness for Guilford County children.

The work accomplished through the Lincoln Financial Foundation has never been more important. Kindergarten readiness continues to decline in Guilford County. In 2018-19 40% of all Guilford County kindergarteners met expected language and literacy skills at the beginning of the year. In 2021-22 just 27% of all Guilford County kindergarteners were considered proficient in those skills.

“The COVID-19 pandemic caused significant gaps in learning, and learning loss will continue to have a dramatic impact,” said Charrise Hart, Ready Ready’s chief executive officer. “The Campaign for Grade-Level Reading is more important than ever. Through our partnership with Lincoln Financial Foundation, Ready Ready will continue its efforts to support and equip our youngest learners with the tools and skills necessary to become successful readers by the end of third grade.”

Reading on grade level by third grade is an early indicator for future success such as high school graduation and entering the workforce. Ready Ready’s Campaign for Grade-Level Reading includes three components.

·       The Basics Guilford: The Basics is a messaging tool to promote early language and literacy development. Ready Ready staff members have trained more than 600 adults focused on early literacy using the Basics Guilford.

·       Active Reading: Active Reading is a framework to build language and literacy skills with toddlers, preschoolers, and beyond. Since the inception of Active Reading, Ready Ready has trained more than 1,000 adults in Guilford County.

·       Book distribution: Ready Ready has partnered with organizations like BackPack Beginnings to deliver more than 7,000 books to young children in Guilford County.

The Lincoln Financial Foundation has a focus on human services, education, and financial wellness. “Our education focus area supports organizations that help students reach their learning potential and prepare them for critical transitions in their education,” said Nancy Rogers, senior vice president of corporate responsibility, and president of the Lincoln Financial Foundation. “We fund programs that strengthen critical learning skills, improve academic performance, and prepare students for college and careers.”

Ready Ready’s mission is to create a connected, innovative system of care for Guilford County’s youngest children and their families. It is a long-term effort aimed at population-level change. The first phase has focused on infants and toddlers to ensure all Guilford County families receive the support and resources they need for social-emotional, physical, language/communication, cognitive, and learning development. The second phase, which launches this year, focuses on children ages three to five.

Media contact: Stephanie Skordas, Director of Marketing and Communications

Local barbers and stylists trained as community health ambassadors to hold maternal health conversations and host educational opportunities for moms-to-be

GREENSBORO, NC, April 12, 2022 — The American Heart Association, Every Baby Guilford, March of Dimes, and Ready for School Ready for Life are proud to be co-recipients of a one-year $67,000 grant from the Cemala Foundation focused on cardiovascular health and maternal health to reduce infant mortality in Guilford County. In response to the high rates of infant mortality in Guilford County, Trusted Spaces, Healthy Babies is a collaboration between these four organizations to form an innovative approach that aims to address the drivers of infant mortality while empowering mothers of Color in trusted community spaces. Programs such as Trusted Spaces, Healthy Babies support mothers and contribute to raising healthy, smart babies.

“Black women face a greater risk of developing high blood pressure, having a stroke, and complications during or immediately after pregnancy.  In fact, Black women are two to three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications. Together, Trusted Spaces, Healthy Babies can help change these statistics,” said Kent Wallace-Meggs, Executive Director for the American Heart Association in the Triad.

Local barbers and stylists recently attended a maternal health training for their participation in the Trusted Spaces, Healthy Babies initiative. The four organizations presented information during this peer-to-peer educational training. A community kick-off event will be announced later this Spring.

In 2019, the American Heart Association began Trusted Spaces, working with beauty salons and barbershops across the Triad to focus on hypertension and health conversations with the Hair, Heart & Health initiative.

Now, Trusted Spaces, Healthy Babies will be implemented across Guilford County in up to 13 barbershops and beauty salons. The initiative includes an outreach campaign with health messages for moms-to-be delivered through the trusted voices of barbers and stylists. Health and parenting resources will be introduced to the participating salons and barbershops for mothers to access, including blood pressure monitors, scales, book nooks, and more.

The American Heart Association will be managing the Trusted Spaces, Healthy Babies initiative with the salons and barbershops and focusing on hypertension and nutrition. The March of Dimes will provide curricula and training support on preconception health tips and links to resources. Ready for School Ready for Life will provide children’s books for shops to share with clients and information about the Basics Guilford to promote healthy parent-child interaction at home. Every Baby Guilford will lead the communications campaign and focus on evaluation, leadership, and coordination support for the Trusted Spaces Healthy Babies initiative. A community health worker will be hired to coordinate and provide assistance for the project based on public health awareness and project implementation.

Salons and barbershops will host events throughout the program with a focus on pre-conception, prenatal and postnatal health, and early childhood development.  Topics at these events will also include healthy cooking, health screenings, accessing government benefits, such as food and nutrition services, and information on Basics Guilford.

According to the Guilford County Department of Health and Human Services’ 2020 Maternal and Child Health Data Brief, Guilford County was one of the top five worst of 100 counties in North Carolina in infant mortality. While Guilford County experienced an 18% decrease in the overall infant mortality rate in 2020, is remains one of the highest in North Carolina. Maternal and infant health outcomes are key indicators for gauging the overall health and wellbeing of a community.

In Guilford County, Black infant mortality is impacted at higher levels than Hispanic and white infants in four of the five categories, including infant mortality rate, preterm births, low birth weight, and very low birth weight. For late or no prenatal care, Black infants were impacted by a 15% increase over white infants.

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of maternal death in the U.S., or more simply put, heart disease is the No. 1 killer of new moms. It can threaten women’s heart health during pregnancy and later in life, making it important that women understand how to care for themselves and their babies. Black women face a greater risk of developing high blood pressure, having a stroke, and complications during or immediately after pregnancy. Pregnancy-related deaths in the U.S. are rising at an alarming rate — and cardiovascular disease is the leading cause. According to the Guilford County Department of Health and Human Services 2019 Leading Causes of Death Data Brief, Diseases of the Heart is the second leading cause of death, accounting for 18% or all deaths in Guilford County, and stroke is the fourth leading cause of death.

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About the American Heart Association

The American Heart Association is a relentless force for a world of longer, healthier lives. We are dedicated to ensuring equitable health in all communities. Through collaboration with numerous organizations and powered by millions of volunteers, we fund innovative research, advocate for the public’s health, and share lifesaving resources. The Dallas-based organization has been a leading source of health information for nearly a century. Connect with us on heart.org, Facebook, Twitter or by calling 1-800-AHA-USA1.

About Every Baby Guilford

Every Baby Guilford’s mission is to ignite and mobilize Guilford County through partnerships and unified strategies to eliminate racial disparities and prevent infant deaths.

About March of Dimes

March of Dimes leads the fight for the health of all moms and babies.

About Ready for School, Ready for Life

Ready for School, Ready for Life (Ready Ready) is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization working to create a connected, innovative system of care for Guilford County’s youngest children and their families. Learn more at www.GetReadyGuilford.org.