Good Beginnings Oahu Council
The Good Beginnings Oahu Council (GBOC) endorses an integrated early education and care system that will:• Promote safe, healthy and appropriate learning environments for all children, including those with special needs.
• Assist families to access early education programs and public/private health and social service programs.
• Facilitate resources to meet identified community and parental needs.
• Elevate the early childhood workforce through work environment improvements and on-going professional development.
O`ahu Council
The Council meets every other month throughout the year. The Council's goal is to cultivate partnerships to maximize resources and mobilize actions that keep children safe, healthy and ready to succeed in school and in life. Our objective is to discover common interests and work as well as barriers that children and families face in their communities that encourage collaborative and coordinating efforts at the county and state levels.
The Council has partners from four early childhood community councils based in Waianae, Kaneohe, Punaluu, and Kahuku as well as from early intervention, foster family programs, state education and special needs, public health and health department, providers working with homelessness, family child interaction learning programs, Head Start and Native Hawaiian education or family services programs.
GBOC’s strongest resource is the fact that it is made up of individuals who currently sit on four early childhood community councils:
• Ka Ahahui Hoowaiwai Na Kamalii A Waianae (Waianae)
• Na Lei Malama (Punaluu)
• Kamalapua O Koolau (Kaneohe) HSSRA Observation Tool
• Koolau Interagency Community Council (Kahuku)
Oahu’s families with young children are the foremost beneficiaries of the Council’s work. The second beneficiary is the GBOC individual member. Through his or her work on the Council, each member will meet other early childhood professionals who can strengthen and enhance the good work that they are doing. State policy makers benefit from the GBOC work and the Community Councils because they hear, first hand from a community-grass root level, about the interests, needs, and barriers facing Oahu’s families with young children.
Oahu communities benefit from the collaborative and coordinating efforts of Council members through conducting collective advocacy activities, using research-based information to develop grant proposals, generating public awareness campaigns to increase public engagement or education, sharing or coordinating resources or developing new resources, etc.
The GBA’s monthly electronic newsletter, Connections, is provided monthly to over 300 members. Over five years, it has successfully linked early childhood professionals and interested parties in quality care for young children, with resources and information such as upcoming training events, community events for families, job opportunities, etc. It has become a reliable resource for the Council and field. In addition, “news” items are provided mid-month (i.e. job postings, trainings, upcoming events).
Success Stories
Born Learning
Born Learning, a United Way of America public engagement campaign, is a GBOC activity that created a partnership between Aloha United Way and Good Beginnings Alliance. The campaign is designed as a tool for long-lasting community change that supports young children and has three cornerstones:
• Awareness to provide important information about how young children learn.
• Education to provide easy, fun action steps parents, grandparents and caregivers can use everyday.
• Action to provide a visible platform for public policy and action.
The Born Learning materials and information offer parents, grandparents and caregivers ways to turn everyday activities into learning moments. Born Learning creates quality early learning opportunities for young children.
Numerous interactive workshops have occurred over the last three years for Oahu communities. Workshops were presented at the 2006 and 2007 HAEYC Annual Conference and Leadership Symposium, 2007 Early Childhood Health Conference, 2007 Read to Me Conference, and the 2007 Hawaii Baptist Early Education Association Annual Conference. Participants learned how to help parents identify learning moments in their everyday life, how to expand on these learning moments to promote early learning, and how these everyday learning moments makes them their child’s first and most important teacher.
Lunch and Learn sessions were held for Hawaiian Telcom and University of Hawaii Federal Credit Union employees as part of AUW’s Gift Giving Campaign. Over 100 parents, grandparents and other caregivers were provided with tips on how to identify various everyday learning moments (i.e. going to the grocery store, going for a walk, etc.) that fosters a child’s educational experience and understanding of his or her world.
Parenting workshops on the value of family mealtime were presented to parents enrolled in Keiki O Ka Aina’s HIPPY program and medical staff at the Kapiolani Medical Center for Women and Children. Over 100 parents, grandparents and other caregivers were provided with information on why family meal times are important, and how they can fit this activity into their busy lifestyle.
For information on the O`ahu Council, please contact Celia Takahashi at (808) 531-5502 or via email:
Community Development Block Grant Project
The City and County of Honolulu awards the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) public service funds to organizations that provide direct services to low-to moderate-income families. Good Beginnings Alliance’s (GBA) CDBG projects use family strengthening and early childhood development strategies to strengthen and enhance parents as the child’ first teacher so that children will be safe, healthy and ready to succeed in, not only kindergarten, but in life. Strategies include parent education classes with the Supporting Parents as First Teachers curriculum, resource skill building workshops using Grab N’ Go ('Ohana Resource Kit), family child interaction learning sessions to provide early learning experiences, and home visiting to provide outreach services.
GBA first received a CDBG grant for $40,000 in 2003 to pilot early childhood services to low-to-moderate-income families living in public housing or homeless shelters. The grant supported a program specialist position to implement GBA’s master plan to reach those families.
From that year on, the CDBG funds have increased to reach more families. By 2005, GBA partnered with Institute for Human Services (IHS) and Palolo Valley Homes (PVH) Federal Public Housing to provide family strengthening and early childhood education services to parents with young children. Parent leadership and advocacy activities became part of the CDBG goals. Parents were mentored with the aim to involve parents in achieving their goal of a healthier community - not just for themselves but for all residents of their community.
Two years later, the CDBG funds were doubled to expand parent education classes, resource skill building workshops, family child interaction learning sessions, and home visit outreach services to 168 family individuals between IHS and PVH.
Upcoming years will see increasing collaborative and coordination efforts by GBA for partnerships to create a systematic service delivery model to vulnerable families living in the City and County of Honolulu.
For information on CDBG, please contact Nalani Galariada at (808) 531-5502 or by email:
