Connected Beginnings’ Libby Zimmerman Professional Development Fund needs your support this holiday season! This year, thanks to the generosity of an anonymous donor, every dollar you donate during our 2010 appeal will be matched, dollar for dollar.
This holiday season you are likely to receive lots of appeals for donations from non-profit, child-focused organizations. You want to know that your donations will make a direct impact on the lives of children and their families. We can assure you that your gift to the Connected Beginnings Libby Zimmerman Fund will do just that!
Your gift will ensure that Massachusetts infant and early childhood professionals have access to Connected Beginnings’ relationship-centered, evidence-based training programs and those same professionals will go on to help to change the lives of babies and young children across the state and region. This is a gift that will keep giving for years to come.
Connected Beginnings’ late founding Director, Dr. Libby Zimmerman, wrote, “There is little debate that relationships are the center of the universe for infants and young children… yet most practitioners were and are still trained to focus on individual development, without the benefit of a paradigm shift that places relationships at the center of professional awareness and intervention.” Since Connected Beginnings’ founding in 2006, we have been focused on the centrality of relationships between very young children and the adults who nurture them. We have provided scholarships, fellowships, evidence-based training and mentoring to infant and early childhood practitioners (Early Interventionists, Early Education and Care Teachers, Childcare Providers,Early Childhood Mental Health Clinicians). In fact, by the close of 2011, Connected Beginnings will have reached over 2,000 infant and early childhood practitioners in Massachusetts.
Your donation to the Libby Zimmerman Fund supplements Connected Beginnings’ public and private grants and contracts and provides a dedicated funding stream to support scholarships, mentorships and professional development activities that are not covered by grants and contracts. Your $100 gift will fund a full day of Infant Mental Health training for an early childhood teacher or an hour of on-site coaching for a family childcare provider. Your gift will help a parent, a teacher, or a caregiver build thefoundations of a child’s social and functional competence which impacts a child’s later ability to succeed in school, form successful relationships throughout life and become a productive member of the community. Please download and print a donation form and send your tax-deductible gift today.
With gratitude from all of us at Connected Beginnings Training Institute, we wish you a peaceful and abundant 2011!
Betsy Leutz, Executive Director
December 1, 2010