Parents

Projects must demonstrate the impact of their efforts on children being kindergarten ready.  Examples include projects that:

1. Help parents better understand what children should know and be able to do at different stages of development to be prepared for kindergarten.
2. Provide information that will help parents understand the characteristics of high quality early learning programs and services and choose the options that best meet their children’s needs.
3. Add or expand a parent education component to an existing early childhood program.
4. Help low income parents become involved in parent education strategies or programs.

Community

All projects must be targeted to community wide organizational efforts that have at least three years of experience and are developed enough to be able to assess the impact of coordinated service delivery on children being ready for kindergarten. Examples include projects that:

1. Design mechanism for reporting progress to the community. 
2. Implement strategies for involving local businesses in ongoing efforts.

Promising Practices/Innovation

Projects may:

1. Provide evaluation for existing program efforts to demonstrate effectiveness;
2. Fund an innovative pilot on how to cost effectively serve children in low income and other challenged families; or
3. Support measurement systems that assess a child’s progress and a provider’s effectiveness. 

Infrastructure

Infrastructure projects are intended to impact multiple early care and education providers/organizations through training or interventions that lead to measured overall increases in programmatic quality and child progress towards being kindergarten ready.

Please note:

MELF funds are not available for on-going operations/programs.  MELF funds are not a source of funding to make up for previous funding cuts, or to expand service delivery.