Early Learning collaboratives bring together essential stakeholders – such as city and school leaders, parents, teachers, and local businesses – who want to see high-quality learning opportunities for families in their community. The goal is to build partnerships among existing local experts in early childhood education to offer affordable, comprehensive early learning opportunities that would otherwise be unavailable to many families.

Using a local collaborative model, we work within communities across Idaho to increase access to high-quality and affordable early learning services. These collaboratives create robust system supports, expanding access to and affordability of quality early learning programs and providing families with engagement opportunities through stronger community collaborations.

The early years are critical to a child's development. Research shows that the brain doesn't build itself properly if a young child doesn't have the proper interactions in the first few years of life. When young children learn through play and have stable, interactive relationships with adults, they build the social and emotional skills needed to succeed throughout life.

We designed our Ready Idaho Early Learning Collaborative Toolkit to support your efforts to create a local early learning collaborative. By forming a collaborative, you can draw on local expertise to design and deliver early learning services that work for the children and families in your community.