Joint Initiatives for Youth + Families

🪣The June is full opportunities to elevate your impact in as an early childhood educator! From leadership to trauma-informed training – and the latest PD Catalog – check out the newsletter today.
🔗 conta.cc/4xcnWnO

City of Colorado Springs faces a significant childcare shortage, with a need for more than 17,000 additional childcare slots across our community. That gap impacts families, employers, and our local economy.

That’s why today’s ribbon cutting of Lion’s Path Preschool at Discovery Church Colorado is worth celebrating. By creating 188 new childcare slots, this project is helping address a critical community need and making Colorado Springs a more family-friendly city.

Thank you to Discovery Church, the COS City Hub, and all the partners who helped bring this vision to life, and for showing a model that other churches and organizations can model to address this need in our city. Because when children thrive, families thrive - and our entire city flourishes.

📚 is a time of big emotions, and books are a great way for families and caregivers to understand them together.

Our booklist is a great resource with topics from friendship, bullying, and empathy to fears, worries, and grief. PLUS, a page is devoted to .

📋bit.ly/ChildrensSocial-EmotionalBooklist

💼You’re all packed, but are you prepared? Whether you’re taking a road trip or flying, traveling with children comes with its complications. Hear from experts Children’s Hospital Colorado on tips for traveling with infants, toddlers, neurodivergent children and more.
✈️ bit.ly/TIPS-TravelingWithKids

Zoning ordinance receiving preliminary approval includes allowing "accessory use" childcare centers in locations such as schools, churches, multifamily housing developments, and some light industrial businesses.

See link for zoning ordinance details and find more on the childcare crisis:
KIDSStrongStart.org

Proposal would make child care centers easier to open across Colorado Springs An ordinance that would make it easier for child and adult day care centers to open in neighborhoods and as part of businesses received preliminary approval Tuesday from the Colorado Springs City Council. The proposal, which the council must pass a second time before it takes effect, would allow bot...

"Childcare is important infrastructure for a city's functioning," ~SherryLynn Boyles, CEO of Joint Initiatives for Youth + Families

Colorado Springs City Council gave initial approval to zoning changes designed to make it easier to open child care facilities in the city.

For more coverage of the ordinance and the childcare crisis, visit:
KIDSStrongStart.org/learn

How city council approved zoning ordinance could improve childcare options citywide City council's initial passage of a new zoning ordinance could make it easier for childcare facilities to open in eastern Colorado Springs, where many families live in childcare deserts.

Early childhood educators show up for the most critical years of a child's life.

An extra hug, some quiet time, gentle encouragement....all part of their essential work that gives children a STRONG START.

KIDSStrongStart.org

Chances are, someone in your earliest years saw something in you and helped it grow.

That’s what early childhood educators do – for every child in their care.

The work is quiet.
The impact is enormous.

KIDSStrongStart.org

☀️ The May is now available! Take action, get TA updates, check out the Harris Program Fellowship, see classes for families + more. Plus...every edition has mental health resources!
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Artists! The Mural Call for Submission deadline is this Friday!