Dear Early Childhood Connector and Verint Community members:
It’s been quiet around here. We would like to explain why!
In 2020 when COVID-19 emerged, Start Early launched the Early Childhood Connector (ECC) to help facilitate real-time connection and collaboration across the field in response to unprecedented needs and challenges brought on by the pandemic. At the time, the platform's value and need was immediately recognized to help accelerate knowledge sharing and spread learned lessons and practices.
Through iterative and extensive research and product testing on the ECC, we have continued to learn and center the changing needs of local communities and their leaders. Most recently, we heard a major pain point to solve is better understanding and mapping of local systems’ programs, policies and funding streams.
Based on this feedback, we are shifting our focus away from the ECC online community and are working to create a new digital tool that enables systems builders to generate a holistic understanding of their system’s existing strengths, gaps and opportunities. Accordingly, the ECC platform has sunset after three years of timely and impactful collaboration amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Changes take effect on this site on August 15.
We are grateful for your contributions to the ECC community, and we hope that you were able to use the platform to learn from and connect with change makers and systems builders from across the country.
If you are not already a subscriber, please consider joining the Start Early email list to hear about our new digital tool, which is scheduled to launch in fall 2023, and our other offerings.
With gratitude,
The Start Early team