CU Cradle 2 Career is a volunteer movement begun by two women - Denise Martin and Lee Ann Kelly - who have channeled their passion and energy these last three years to establish an organization dedicated to improving the lives of the CU community’s children. Reaching out to all kinds of leaders, these women showed how the whole community’s well-being is connected to the well-being of our children.
In other words, if the village doesn’t support all of its children from cradle to career, its own vitality is jeopardized. Today, CUC2C engages over 100 individuals and entities in a collective impact approach centered on five goals:
Every child is ready to learn upon entering kindergarten. Every student is supported for academic success. Every graduating student is workforce ready. Every student graduated from high school. And, Every student completes a post-secondary credential. Their goal teams, intentionally populated with members from all sectors, forge an agreed upon understanding of the goal, survey the community in relation to the goal to help identify barriers to goal attainment, research best practices to overcome those barriers while also mapping local programming addressing the goal. The intention is to “measure what works and scale it up” whether that is strengthening existing resources or helping re-align resources around identified gaps. Since early childhood impacts all future life success, Cradle 2 Career formed the first goal team, Kindergarten Readiness in March 2014. In acknowledgment of the skilled labor gap in our county, CUC2C chose to launch the Workforce Readiness goal team second. In 2016 the Academic Success goal team will be launched. Every individual or entity who joins CUC2C is a member of the Leadership Council (LC). LC members commit to supporting the work of CUC2C through the skills they bring to the table. The Steering Committee, a smaller subset of the Leadership Council, acts as the decision making body, overseeing the work of the partnership, and guiding the volunteer staff. CUC2C is one of only a handful of the over 200 C2C’s across the country. Martin and Kelly believes this enables the focus to stay “on the children” instead of on fundraising. Their ultimate goal? “A thriving community where every child achieves, every student graduates and every adult succeeds.”
