United Way of Greater Cincinnati (UWGC) leads a collaborative effort to help ensure all children ages 0-6 are healthy and ready to succeed by the time they start kindergarten. Created in 2003, UWGC's Success By 6® has served as a backbone convener and champion for our community's youngest generation.
UWGC's Success By 6® championed a movement that energized supporters and investors who value quality child care and early education. We started by setting community-level goals. Following the Great Recession of 2007-2009, UWGC convened more than four dozen community partner organizations in 2010 to co-create a collective vision for what a thriving region should look like by 2020. In 2011, UWGC unveiled the outcome of this process: six data-informed aspirational Bold Goals in the areas of education, income and health. Our Bold Goal to ensure more children were ready for kindergarten built off the foundation established by Success By 6®– including establishing a baseline, measured in 2006, of 44 percent of kids showing up ready to learn.
UWGC's persistence and investments in services, collaborations and advocacy to ensure all young children are healthy and ready to succeed by kindergarten catalyzed well-known services throughout our community–such as Every Child Succeeds–and laid the groundwork for critical systemic change–like the passing and renewal of Cincinnati Preschool Promise.
United Way has used a variety of strategies: