Our mentors educate moms and provide them with activities to help their babies develop social, language, emotional, and motor skills.

Mentors and moms work together on an interactive baby book and child rearing program while mentors provide love and encouragement to the moms.

Our curriculum equips our mentors to

• Educate families about the growth and develop of their babies: we provide a month-to-month guide beginning prenatally through baby’s early years including milestones and activities to support baby’s growth

• Improve the parenting skills of this generation to impact the next generation

• Mitigate and prevent child abuse and neglect

• Share the hope and love of Jesus Christ

Your baby’s development from birth to age three has a huge impact on his or her ability to succeed in school, to go to college, to get a job with a livable wage, and to grow into an adult capable of meeting challenges head on.

Simple skills come first; more complex skills build on top of them.

A strong foundation in the early years improves the odds for positive outcomes; a weak foundation increases the odds of problems later in life.

• During the first few years of life, 700 new neural connections (synapses) are formed every second. Connections that are not used are pruned away.

• Use it or lose it: early experiences determine which circuits are reinforced through frequent use and which are pruned through lack of use

• Positive, healthy growth-promoting experiences help to develop brains that are efficient and capable of handling challenges.

• Negative experiences, such as abuse or neglect, may increase the neural connections dedicated to fear and anger – and prune those dedicated to reasoning, learning, and memory.

• These changes are built into the architecture of developing brains. Ensuring children have healthy experiences helps to ensure the neural connections that are growing are the ones they need to thrive.

• Ongoing, reliable interaction with trusted adults is essential for the development of healthy brain circuits

• Differences in development appear early – for example, differences in vocabulary growth between children in low socio-economic households and high socio-economic households can appear as early as 18 months

• Without intervention, these differences only get larger as children near school age and then enter school.

• The key differences between low and high socio-economic households are the number and quality of language children heard from birth on. In low socio-economic households, adults, who may be working multiple jobs to support a family and who may have lower education levels, speak far fewer words o their kids, and the context does not invite interaction.

• Early childhood programs that expose children to language-rich environments and engaging caregivers are especially important for children in these households

• Differences in development appear very early — in this instance, differences in vocabulary growth between children in low socio-economic households and high socio-economic households begin to appear as early as 18 months.

• As the children grow toward school age, and enter school, the differences only get larger in the absence of intervention.

• The key differences in these households were both the number and quality of the language children heard, from birth on. In low SES households — where there’s the stress of putting food on the table and working multiple jobs, where there’s lower education levels — children hear far fewer words, and the context does not invite interaction.

• Early childhood programs that expose children to language-rich environments and engaging caregivers are especially important for these kids.

The cumulative effects of adversity can pile up to derail the process of healthy development and dramatically increase the odds of developmental delays. This study followed children ages birth to 36 months who had been maltreated and found that the more risk factors they experienced, the greater their chance of experiencing problems in cognitive, social, emotional, and physical development.

And in each case, the majority of those returns are to society — not to the individual. So while the individuals who participate do have better jobs, better education, and better lives, in terms of dollars returned from the investment, it’s society that is the big winner, primarily through savings in crime and justice, health care, and educational remediation costs.

• Several rigorous longitudinal studies have looked at long-term outcomes of participants in early childhood programs and their benefits to the individuals and to society.

• Perry Preschool's returns consist of increased earnings for individuals and, to the public, savings in welfare, special ed, and the costs of crime, as well as increased income tax revenues.

• All have shown clearly that there IS a big return on investment — ranging from $3 to more than $9 for every dollar invested in the program.

• The three shown here represent different kinds of interventions, populations, and goals, yet all of them yielded significant return on investment.

Keys to Healthy Development

• A balanced approach to emotional, social, cognitive, and language development, starting in the earliest years of life.

• Supportive relationships and positive learning experiences that begin with parents but are strengthened by others outside the home.

• Highly specialized interventions as early as possible for children and families experiencing significant adversity.