Atlanta's Sheltering Arms Leads Project to Expand Use of Two-Generation Strategies in Three States

The com­mit­ment to cre­ate oppor­tu­ni­ties for chil­dren and their par­ents to suc­ceed togeth­er is spread­ing: A new three-year project fund­ed by the Buf­fett Ear­ly Child­hood Fund will sup­port the use of two-gen­er­a­tion approach­es at Edu­care schools in Ari­zona, Louisiana and Maine.

Our local part­ner in Atlanta, Shel­ter­ing Arms Ear­ly Edu­ca­tion and Fam­i­ly Cen­ters, has been tapped to lead the project. Shel­ter­ing Arms, which runs Edu­care Atlanta, has worked close­ly with Dun­bar Ele­men­tary School and the Cen­ter for Work­ing Fam­i­lies Inc. over the past cou­ple years to address the needs of the chil­dren and par­ents they serve in south­west Atlanta so that both can thrive. Locat­ed in the same city block, the part­ners pro­vide young chil­dren with access to high-qual­i­ty ear­ly child­hood and ele­men­tary edu­ca­tion while con­nect­ing their par­ents with secure jobs and oppor­tu­ni­ties to strength­en their abil­i­ty to sup­port their children’s development.

The expe­ri­ence of the Atlanta part­ners will help inform the efforts of the three Edu­care schools par­tic­i­pat­ing in the project, with the ulti­mate goal of estab­lish­ing and strength­en­ing a more com­pre­hen­sive approach to work­ing with fam­i­lies in those schools. The project is expect­ed to reach about 600 more chil­dren and their families.

The work of our part­ners in Atlanta gar­nered nation­al atten­tion ear­li­er this year in the lead sto­ry of a series from The Atlantic on pover­ty in Georgia.