Today's Child,

Tomorrow's Leader

Ensuring that children are prepared to succeed is the single greatest long-term human and economic development opportunity available to us.

Success By 6^® is a long-term collaborative effort, which addresses the importance of a child's first six years of life.  United Way of Greenville County is the catalyst and convener of this community initiative, that is working to ensure that every child in our community is healthy, safe, nurtured, and ready to succeed in school by age six.

Helping Children Succeed for Life

This initiative is rooted in the understanding that the earliest years are critical to human development. Ensuring that quality early childhood services are available and continued requires a long-term commitment from families, service providers, policymakers, businesses, educators, and civic leaders.

The Success By 6 initiative provides a structure to encourage people and organizations to work together for the benefit of children. This initiative offers unique opportunities for collaborations and partnerships among the public and private sectors. These collaborations and partnerships represent our community's commitment to doing what it takes to help the youngest members of our community achieve success.

Current Community Initiatives

Advocacy

A cornerstone of Success By 6 is to be a child's advocate to improve or support early childhood systems throughout Greenville County.  Success By 6 works closely with local and state leaders to shape public policy. 

The Child Care Initiative of Greenville County:

Launched August 2002 Success By 6 convened 13 community partners to form, The Greenville County Child Care Initiative which is committed to making a difference in the quality, availability and affordability of child care in the Greenville Community. This partnership is focusing on coordination and expansion of resources, communicating child care issues, and shaping public policy.

"Partners In Productivity"

Success By 6 launched "Partners In Productivity," where business leaders, early childhood experts, child care providers and community volunteers work together to build "family-friendly work environments," and educate employees/parents about identifying and securing high-quality child care. Through our work with the Greenville Chamber and the statewide committee, Greenville continues to have local SC Family Friendly Workplace Award winners. 

Web of Child Development Centers

Success By 6 generates significant funding to help support the expansion of the School District of Greenville County's Child Development/Family Learning Centers.  These centers provide early childhood education and family support programs, such as state-funded four-year-old kindergarten programs, family literacy, preschool special education, "Parents As Teachers," a health clinic, infant/toddler care for children of adults in literacy programs, and classes for non-English speaking parents.   

Supporting extended-day 4-year-old kindergarten for academically at-risk students

Through a $450,000 Bank of America grant, Success By 6 supports extended-day 4-year-old kindergarten for academically at-risk students at the Dunbar Child Development Center in Greer. The grant also provides training and support to assist one non-profit and four school district child development centers in achieving national NAEYC accreditation. The first center to qualify, Northwest Crescent Child Development and Family Learning Center, became NAEYC accredited in August 2002.   Dunbar Child Development Center earned its NAEYC accreditation August 2003.