Community Cause of the Year

Winner:

PreSchool Partners

Changing lives, one family at a time

After 20 years working with preschool-age children, PreSchool Partners is starting to see the long-term fruit of its labor. This year one program graduate is attending the Naval Academy and another is attending the University of Alabama. There are countless other success stories. 

The organization runs a preschool program for 3 and 4 year olds and their parents, targeting families in Norwood and Woodlawn as well as other areas that are zoned for Birmingham City Schools.

Their ultimate goal is to get students to graduate from high school, but that starts years earlier preparing the children for a successful start to kindergarten and giving them confidence in their ability to learn.

As a result, many of their students are reading and writing before they start kindergarten. Each year about 93 percent of the children in the program test as ready for kindergarten, and many become peer models when they enter elementary school. Often a student who enters the program scoring 0 percent in letter, number, shape and color recognition end the year scoring 100 percent in each and able to write his or her name.   

Each classroom at PreSchool Partners has two teachers with education degrees. 

“Having qualified teachers makes a different,” Executive Director Lella Hamiter said. “They are in the trenches going above and beyond, and they have a heart for this.”

Still, Hamiter said what sets their program apart is that they require parents to attend sessions every Monday morning.

“If you are going to affect real change, you have to reach the parents,” Hamiter said. “We want to empower families.”

Speakers come in to address stress management, nutrition, how to deal with temper tantrums and other topics, and volunteers from Iberia Bank and Compass Bank work with parents on budgets.

“It’s about enhancing parenting skills,” Hamiter said. “It’s stuff we all need to learn.”

The parents also attend a Families Reading Together class. Each week the parents receive a new book, and teachers talk through how to read it interactively and work on pre-reading skills with their children. Each week they also go home with a homework assignment to reinforce what they learn. This exercise doubles as preparation for working with their children on homework in the future, too.

“We are not only telling them it’s important,” Hamiter said. “We are showing them how to read with their children.”

After nine years at Trinity Presbyterian and 10 before that at Southside Baptist, PreSchool Partners will have its own home this summer. Their new building on Montevallo Road across from McElwain Baptist Church will allow their capacity to expand from 70 students to 112, which can help accommodate the more than 70 families that are on their waiting list. 

Still, they plan for that growth to occur slowly while maintaining low teacher-to-student ratios in classes. The building will also feature a parent classroom that seats up to 200 people. Hamiter said they hope to share the space with the community to be used for other programs. 

The space will allow them to remain close to Mountain Brook, as more than 80 percent of the PreSchool Partners staff are Mountain Brook residents, including Hamiter, and many volunteers are from Mountain Brook as well. Additionally, Mountain Brook residents Bill Black and Jeannette Hancock started PreSchool Partners as an outreach out of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church after tutoring in Birmingham City Schools and realizing how far behind students were.

“I have always known how generous our community is, but I get to see it first hand every day,” Hamiter said.

To learn more, visit preschool-partners.org.

Runner Up:

Junior League of Birmingham

Each year the Junior League of Birmingham pours more than $1 million and 40,000 volunteer hours into the community. 

“About 80 percent of our membership works, about 50 percent have children, and they still find time to get their volunteer hours in,” President Alison Scott said. 

The league’s 2,400 members work with 40 projects in the city, so there is an area of interest for most any member. Often members find a particular cause they care about and become involved with it long term, which fits their mission to train women community leaders. 

“I think you would be hard pressed to find a nonprofit organization in Birmingham that doesn’t have a Junior League member on its board,” Scott said. 

Whatever project they take on, the Junior League wants their members to take a leadership role and also to help grow the mission of an organization without burdening them. 

It’s for that reason that Scott sad the most fulfilling moments are when an organization doesn’t need their help any more and they can move on to help someone else.