Kresge Foundation Creates $20 Million Initiative for Early Childhood Education
The five-year initiative creates new early-childhood centers, loans for existing facilities and grants for improvements.
The Kresge Foundation is directing $20 million towards a new effort to benefit young Detroit children. The Kresge Early Years for Success, or KEYS initiative, will provide funding for new and existing early childhood centers in the city over the next five years. Program officer Neesha Modi says the program will create three new early-childhood facilities.
“If we are to build really comprehensive centers that bring health, human services, parent education that really address the entire family needs and all the needs of the child, that those would really be a hub that would allow other early learning centers in the neighborhoods and across the city to really tap into that.”
Neesha Modi, Program Officer Kresge Foundation
Modi says Detroit’s early childhood centers can only serve 22 percent of the city’s children below the age of five. She says the KEYS initiative will create a coalition with the Kellogg Foundation to consider on future education efforts.
