Top Ten Highlights from 2024
Cradle 2 Career’s Top Ten Updates for the End of the Year
As we wind down the year, we enter a time of reflection and rest. This is a time to relax, enjoy time with family, and reflect on the year’s accomplishments. Cradle 2 Career (C2C) has a lot to celebrate this year! We are celebrating our top ten highlights from 2024. The following list highlights some, but not all, of the work we are doing to improve educational outcomes for every child in our community!
Before we dive in, we want to acknowledge the work of our many partners, without whom this work would not be possible. Thank you to those who voluntarily give time and passion to improve educational outcomes for students in our community. Whether they serve on one of our Networks (Prenatal to Age 3, Transition 2 Kindergarten, or High School Graduation), our Parent Council, or Leadership Table – or offer support in other ways, we appreciate you!
In no particular order, please enjoy this end of year recap!
1. Launching a Promise Advocate Cohort Training
In July 2024, C2C’s Community Advocacy Manager Beth Martinez launched our first bilingual Promise Advocates Cohort (PAC) with 10 parents, caregivers, and neighbors in Rochester.
The C2C Promise Advocates Cohort (PAC) is a space to learn and work alongside fellow parents, caregivers, and neighbors to ignite participants’ inherent political power, invest in their capacity as self advocates, and act on opportunities to create real change grounded in lived experiences. The PAC adapted the curriculum from the national Building a Parent Nation campaign and work done by Education Partnership Coalition (EPC) member St. Paul Promise. Through family-centered policy and advocacy efforts, this opportunity seeks to change systems to deliver on the promise of opportunity for all - from cradle to career.
The group completed their training in October 2024 and the participants are now actively participating in community programming and/or are being informed of potential opportunities to stay engaged in our community.
Email Beth if you would like to ask questions or participate in the next PAC training!
2. Building Relationships with Community Parents & Guardians
We continue to build and grow relationships with parents and guardians through focused attention by Beth, our Community Advocacy Manager. This is exemplified by a boom in our Parent Council participation. Not only has the Parent Council doubled in size since Beth joined our team in September 2023, but the council has been more involved in the work of C2C than ever. The Parent Council gives regular feedback to the networks on the work of their pilot initiatives and strategies. This takes shape in many ways from council members attending network meetings, to using regular Parent Council meetings to identify data trends and give feedback on initiatives like the Early Childhood Resource Hub or the FAFSA Completion project.
We have plans to further increase participation in 2025. To ensure our partnership is equitable, Parent Council members receive a stipend for their time. In addition, meals and childcare are provided at meetings. If you would like to learn more about the Parent Council or join this group, visit the Parent Council Webpage here or email Beth.
3. Evaluating Pilots
The work we are doing adds value to the community and we rely on data to show our success. Our Data Analysts, Noah Shore and José Ortega, and our Data and Research Sub-Committee have been working diligently to ensure our results are measurable. To evaluate the success of the pilots, we track both quantitative and qualitative trend data to get a full picture of the pilot’s impact.
These goals and measures are set by C2C staff, Network members, and the Research Sub-Committee. Two pilot programs that were launched this year, the FAFSA Completion project and the Early Childhood Resource Hub, have specific evaluation plans in place to monitor their success. When successful, we will have the data needed to scale these programs which creates systems change in our community.
4. Securing Multi-Year Funding from the State of Minnesota and Strengthening our Statewide Efforts through the EPC (Education Partnerships Coalition)
C2C is not alone in our work to improve educational outcomes. In Minnesota, there are nine organizations doing similar work in their respective communities. Together, we make up the Education Partnership Coalition (EPC). The EPC gathers to discuss and advocate for policy and practice changes to support educational outcomes improvement and to uplift the voices of our communities.
Thanks to hard work of our Executive Director, Julie Ruzek, and the Executive Directors of the other EPC member organizations, the EPC secured multi-year funding from the State of Minnesota education budget. This funding allows the partnerships to spend less time searching for funding sources and spend more time dedicating resources to our critical initiatives. C2C has grown significantly as a direct result of this funding. Learn more about the EPC here!
5. Launching a Functional and Accessible Website
In this digital age, an organization is not legitimate without a fully functional website. Like the other projects that we completed this year, we are so proud of our updated and refreshed website!
At the forefront of this project, we paid special attention to accessibility. Not only is the website available in four languages (English, Arabic, Somali, and Spanish), but it also includes accommodations for those with different abilities. Check out the buttons in the bottom corners of any page to explore these features!
Community Input
Before we began building the new website, we took time to ask our partners and community members their thoughts about C2C and the work we do. By hosting focus groups, collecting survey results, and having conversations, we were able to recenter the messaging of C2C. This helped us put the community at the core of who we are and how we talk about the work that we do. This ultimately lead us not only to the amazing website you are browsing right now, but to a new Strategic Communications Plan, as well.
Data Housing
The website is meant to do more than just share information about the work of C2C. We share public education data all in one, convenient location. We cannot improve outcomes as a community if the community doesn’t know outcomes trends. Check out our data page to see important indicators in the main goal areas C2C and our partners are working to improve.
Room for Growth
Something special about our website is that it is never quite finished. Since its initial creation in May, C2C staff has created four new webpages: the Early Childhood Resource Hub (see more below), the College Readiness Page (see more below), the Annual Education Summit home page, and a page dedicated to our work in Community Co-Design. We are thrilled to grow the website alongside our blooming initiative!
Other notable new features on our site include: designated pages for the backbone of C2C and its networks, a unique Visual Approach depicting our work through a visual metaphor, and the capability to receive donations. (If you want to support our work financially, click here!) We are very proud to have created a website that is as dynamic as Cradle 2 Career itself!
6. Completing the Early Childhood Resource Hub
The Early Childhood Resource Hub webpage was launched in September 2024. The mission of the Early Childhood Resource Hub is to help families with young children in Olmsted County access a wide range of resources and services. The hub aims to connect families to early learning opportunities to improve education and early development for all children in our community.
The Early Childhood Resource Hub is a collaborative effort between Cradle 2 Career and Intercultural Mutual Assistance Association (IMAA). This strategy was inspired by the stories and experiences learned through IMAA’s Whole Family Systems, a partnership between the Minnesota Department of Human Services, BUILD Initiative, and local community sites.
At the heart of the mission is a commitment to collaboration with local partners. We work closely with schools, community organizations, and others to make connections and ensure all systems are working as one. They should all be available to support families!
Through these partnerships, we can make access to resources easy. We can also use them to learn from one another within our many cultural communities. This partnership will help us address the diverse needs of families with young children in Rochester.
Click here to check out the Early Childhood Resource Hub and share the link with any young families in Olmsted County!
7. Completing Two Community Co-design Reports & State Recognition
On top of the regular work of our busy networks, the Transition 2 Kindergarten Network and Prenatal to Age 3 Network facilitated and completed two Community Co-Design projects. The two Co-Design cohorts discussed the topics of Social-Emotional Learning and Adequate Access to Prenatal Care in Olmsted County respectively. The groups met once a month over the course of four months. In between the group meetings, participants went into their respective communities to have deeper conversations with others who were touched by the subjects of the studies.
Based on this web of community conversations held by the participants, the groups identified potential solutions to thematic shortcomings in Rochester and Olmsted County. C2C Network Facilitator Winnie Godi then synthesized notes from these meetings into reports. These were crafted with specific intention to preserve the voices of those who participated.
The Prenatal to Age 3 co-design project was facilitated with the help of the Olmsted County Department of Health. Recognized by the Minnesota Department of Health, the joint effort received the 2024 Betty Hubbard Maternal Community Health award! We are excited about the continued partnership with the county and to implement solutions presented by the studies in 2025.
Read about the award in this article written by the Post Bulletin.
8. Growing the Annual Education Summit
The Annual Education Summit began with humble beginnings as a small, professional development event for around 50 educators in 2021. After first scaling the event and dubbing it the C2C Annual Education Summit in 2022 under the leadership of Communications Manager Angalee Schmidt, the summit has become a staple in C2C’s value add to our community.
This year, the summit boasted 32 presentations, 61 presenters, and 232 registrants – a landslide record for the event!
We were so thrilled to see such amazing turnout and participation. Attendees made new connections and participated in conversations in topic areas that they were already passionate about and in areas that they may have been new to. We are already making preparations for the 2025 Annual Education Summit! Check out the new summit webpage to see presentations from 2024 and to learn about 2025 updates as they happen.
9. Uplifting Youth Voice and Growing the Student Data Summit
Students are the heart of everything we do. We work hard to include student voices in the initiatives we implement. One way we do this is by hosting a yearly Student Data Summit where students from schools in Rochester and surrounding school districts are invited to examine data specific to them. They are given time to analyze data points and ask questions in small groups. Then the students are given time to brainstorm potential solutions to problem areas that they identify. These solutions are presented to the whole group and taken back to their schools’ leadership. The Student Data Summit grew significantly in 2024 from its start in 2022. Community Advocacy Manager Beth has plans to grow the event further in 2025. We are excited to share plans when they are solidified early next year. Read more about the 2024 Student Data Summit here!
10. Growing Backbone Staff
As mentioned above, 2024 has offered a lot of growth to not only the work of C2C, but also to our team. Thanks to funding from the state, other public and private donors, and earned revenue, C2C was able to add three new passionate individuals to our team! Anna Schmidt, Greg Jacob, and Jennifer Klampe will join C2C in early 2025.
Anna and Greg will be our new dynamic duo Network Facilitators. The networks will benefit in having two staff dedicated to their rapidly growing initiatives. These new hires will build on the momentum gained over the last year by previous Network Facilitator Winnie Godi. She left big shoes to fill but we are excited to have found equally brilliant new hires to carry on her work.
Our backbone staff will be more organized than ever with Jennifer as our Operations Manager. She will help us untangle calendars, manage budgets, troubleshoot technological issues, and so much more.
We are so excited to welcome these new enthusiastic champions of educational equity to our team!
Looking back at our amazing work from 2024, our team is glowing with pride. To celebrate a successful calendar year, most of our team will be out of office from December 24th through January 5th. This break will allow us to rest and prepare for an eventful new year. 2025 is looking bright, stay tuned!