Education

Success in life begins with a quality education. And yet, many Champaign County children and youth enter school unprepared, lacking the support they need to strengthen their literacy and math skills and stay on track in school. Ultimately this leads to fewer students graduating high school and finding a career.

Today, United Way of Champaign County is announcing a bold goal to change the statistics. To build a community where every child can achieve their full potential, we must start with early education.

The end of August is back to school time for the kids of Champaign County. This year looks very different from the past.

For those families who are returning to the classroom, safety precautions and new schedules have been a lot to manage. With family budgets stretched thin by the pandemic, school supplies may be out of reach for many. And a majority of the students in our community will not be returning to the classroom, instead participating in distance learning.

The most in-demand professional skills are abilities most people start developing while they are in diapers.

According to LinkedIn, the top five skills employers look for most are:

Keep young kids engaged while they're at home

United Way of Champaign County invests in quality early childhood education programs in our community. We provide tools and resources that teach parents and caregivers facts and best practices for different ages and stages of a young child’s life. From Getting Ready for Kindergarten Calendars to Born Learning Trails and our many early education grants, we provide information that helps ensure all kids get a strong start. 

Students from Champaign Unit 4 and Urbana Unit 116 school districts are receiving the home learning supplies they need thanks to a $4,000 grant distribution from the Champaign County COVID-19 Relief Fund and a $1,000 donation from the CU Schools Foundation. 

Loose-leaf paper, composition notebooks, pencils, manual pencil sharpeners, pens, folders, colored pencils, crayons, rulers, glue sticks and note cards are being provided to students to support at-home learning activities.

Over the course of the next few weeks, over 52,000 students will begin fall classes at our two great higher education institutions. The transition to college life can come with challenges - and United Way is here to help.

United Way of Champaign County is pleased to announce our 2017-2018 Getting Ready for Kindergarten Calendar is now available! This year’s calendar features artwork from Champaign Public Library’s Mother Goose on the Loose program.

Problem solving, teamwork, creativity, communication and persistence are important job skills. These types of job skills are called Soft Skills and are transferable to nearly every type of job!

But some students are focused on something else – where they are going to sleep tonight.

582 Champaign County schoolchildren were homeless at some point during the 2018-19 school year*.

The Williams** family – mom and four school-age children - was one of those families. They became homeless and were living in their car.

Did you know that 90 percent of our brains are “hard-wired” by age 5?

Early learning is a critical part of childhood development—and it can happen anywhere, at any time. That’s why we developed United Way Born Learning Trails.