This past February, Joyful Spaces, a pilot program designed to promote high-quality early childhood education (ECE) facilities in the St. Louis, MO, area, finished its first phase: a training series for seven experienced ECE providers. Known as the Joyful Spaces Peer Champions (Champions), these providers completed seven trainings, over 16 weeks, focused on recognizing facility quality and pursuing facility improvement projects.
Jointly administered by IFF and the Gateway Early Childhood Alliance (Gateway), Joyful Spaces is designed to equip St. Louis ECE providers with the knowledge they need to analyze and improve their own facilities. The program hinges around three core features: 1) the Champions, who will share learnings from the trainings with and offer mentorship in facility projects to their ECE networks; 2) the Early Learning Facilities Self-Assessment tool (ELFSA), a survey to help ECE providers analyze their own facilities and understand the best ways to improve them; and 3) a set of loan and grant opportunities to support facility renovations.
During the Champions’ training series, program staff covered topics such as identifying ECE facility quality, prioritizing facility improvement needs, engaging with contractors, accessing funding, and utilizing the ELFSA tool. Still in an early form, the tool will be refined based on feedback received through the Joyful Spaces program.
Moving forward, the Champions are preparing to launch improvement projects at their own facilities with support from IFF’s Real Estate Solutions team and funding from loans and/or grants through Joyful Spaces. Construction on these projects will take place throughout the summer. In addition, the Champions will share their learnings from these projects and the trainings with the first cohort of Joyful Spaces Program Participants, a group of 35 ECE providers from the Champions’ networks in St. Louis. Champions are helping participants use the ELFSA tool and will advise them on facility improvement projects of their own. In exchange for their feedback on the tool, participants will receive a stipend that can be used toward their improvement projects.
Learn more about IFF’s early childhood education work in Missouri.