Every child and young adult succeeds cradle to career, through shared purpose, alignment and accountability among community partners.
Our Beginning
Cradle 2 Career started with a simple question, “Are our education investments making a difference in kids’ lives?” Rochester Rotary and United Way of Olmsted County decided the answer could be better. Fast forward to now, and we are an emerging StriveTogether community, and we are making a collective impact on the lives of Rochester’s youth.
We can build a healthy community for everyone.
Imagine that our community is a garden. Each row and raised garden within has a specific function to feed our youth. These rows are our collaborative action networks filled with individual programs feeding and nurturing our kids through shared and aligned outcomes. Each plant has specific needs to flourish and grow. Beans need lines to connect to, honeysuckle desires a trellis to support its flowers. Cradle 2 Career is the fertilizer, the trellis, the lines that support the growth in each row so our community partners working collaboratively on each outcome have both the capacity and capability to make a difference in the individual lives of Rochester's youth.
Our Purpose
We believe Olmsted County can be a healthy community for everyone. We believe that every youth can succeed cradle to career when they have access to the resources they need, when they need them. We believe when we collectively work to better the lives for all our youth, we collectively better the lives for all our residents. We cannot do this work alone, we need you to join us to ensure every child and young adult succeeds cradle to career, through shared purpose, alignment and accountability among community partners.
37%
of young adults are gainfully employed in Olmsted County.
46%
of eighth graders are proficient in math.
56%
of 3rd graders reading at grade level at the end of 3rd grade.
At Cradle 2 Career our strength is in our data-driven decision making. We use Results Count, a data method that asks three questions:
How much did we do?
How well did we do it?
Who is better off for it?
Each of our community partners align their program data to the shared outcomes, uses Results Count, and we measure our success collectively. This approach creates the strongest possible team to do more for Rochester’s youth. Working together and using data, we remove barriers for youth and create access for each student to achieve success.
Where will she go?
How will she make this world a better place?
Invest
Be part of the system. Invest in our future. We want your time supporting the work of our community partners. We want your talent mentoring and interacting with your future residents, neighbors, workforce. We want your financial support so we can sustain the system that is watering our community gardens, growing the youth of our community, and creating a place that is healthy for everyone. We believe in excellence for everyone, invest in that excellence.
