GOODWIN CONNECTIONS

Our Family Connections Program supports the entire family. When families are accepted into the program, they become eligible for childcare or preschool tuition assistance for their children. By supporting low-income families with childcare and preschool expenses, it allows parents to attend college full-time, focus on their studies, graduate in a timely manner, and ultimately embark on a career that pays a living wage. At the same time, their children receive a quality early-learning opportunity–giving them a great start on their own educational journey.

In 2019, we went through a rebranding process which will help us to expand our program to support 75 families in 2019-2020.

Our program supports parents from the first day they enter our program through college graduation day. For 73% of our student parents, they will become the first college graduate in their family. For all of our student parents, our program alleviates a major barrier toward completing their first college degree--the budget-breaking cost of childcare or preschool.

While in our program, student parents have access to a volunteer team that will cheer them on and provide resources as they take this important step toward a brighter financial future. In addition, student parents are offered professional development opportunities such as event networking, and job readiness workshops. All family members receive basic needs support.

Our program aims to fill a much-needed gap in our region and it is working. 96% of our students graduate on time after they are accepted into our program.

Through our three-year strategic plan to strengthen and build capacity for our organization, we have been able to increase our staffing capacity, which in turn has allowed us to more than double the number of families in our Family Connections Program. It has also enabled us to develop our Community Connections Program that makes meaningful connections with other family-focused organizations that support low-income families with the aim to inspire even more parents to enroll in college courses and support educational opportunities for children.

Recent Seattle Milk Fund graduates include dental hygienists, medical assistants, teachers, nurses, accountants, engineers, scientists, social workers, and tech workers.

Our program has more than doubled in size from 30 families in 2017 to 65 families in 2019. We expect to support 76 student parents, 98 children--231 family members in total by spring 2020.

We will look to keep our funding levels up so that we are able to maintain our current number of families in 2019 and increase steadily into 2020 and 2021 to have more than 75 families in our program at any given time.