News & Events

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Resources

Sharing Community Resources

Even—or especially—during times of unprecedented disruption, Future Ready Collier seeks to be an asset for the community. A collective of over 60 educational nonprofits, agencies, and community stakeholders, Future Ready Collier’s mission is to support students throughout their educational experience. Importantly, this extends to an appreciation that academic success is contingent on factors outside the classroom. In addition to aggregating its own materials, Future Ready Collier receives and distributes resources from its partners.

Posted by Caroline Ridgway
College & Career News Resources

College and Career Paths in a COVID World

A survey conducted in May 2020 by the Florida College Access Network begins to reveal some of the effects of COVID-19 on workforce and higher education. Most immediately relevant to Future Ready Collier, the pandemic is negatively impacting students’ post-high school plans. The data indicate that students already pursuing postsecondary education of some kind, and current or graduating high school students exploring their next steps, are being affected.

Posted by Caroline Ridgway
Pathways students
Early Learning News

Pathways Early Education Center: Growing to Serve in Immokalee

Only an hour from downtown Naples, but a world apart, Immokalee is home to Pathways Early Education Center. In operation for more than 56 years, Pathways ably serves its mission of creating educational opportunities for Immokalee’s youngest and most at-need children, with curricula for infant through pre-kindergarten. Pathways is newer to Future Ready Collier than some of their peers, joining in 2018 when Beth Hatch assumed leadership. Their eagerness to contribute has been manifest since day one.

Posted by Caroline Ridgway
FRC leadership session brainstorm
News Success Stories

Future Ready Collier: The Promise of Collective Action

In assessing how to strengthen our communities, collaboration is a frequently raised topic—most commonly relative to its current insufficiency. Local stakeholders may bemoan the lack of cohesiveness, overlapping or unclear missions, competition, and siloing that keeps ideas and action from collective generation. In Southwest Florida, Future Ready Collier is an example of collective action happening in real time, to real effect.

Posted by Caroline Ridgway
Healthcare Network
News Resources

Healthcare Network: The Power of Access and Community Health

When you think of a community initiative centered primarily on education, your first guesses of likely partners may not include healthcare providers. However, engaging the medical community has been key to pursuing Future Ready Collier’s priorities. Healthcare Network, founded in Immokalee in 1977, today operates approximately 20 practices throughout Collier County, as well as two mobile units and telehealth. As a community health center, their scope encompasses pediatric through adult primary care, dental, women’s health, and integrated behavioral health—a collaborative form of care where medical providers and behavioral health providers work together to address physical mental and emotional needs. It is their ability to interact with families and children daily that underscores Healthcare Network’s contributions.

Posted by Caroline Ridgway
GN Fire Intern
College & Career News

The Greater Naples Chamber: Connecting Education to Workforce through Work-Based Learning

When Future Ready Collier was formalized, it was as a strategic offshoot of the Greater Naples Chamber’s Opportunity Naples initiative. This effort identified a need to assign resources to support students throughout their primary education. In the intervening years, the Chamber has retained a meaningful role in Future Ready Collier. Specifically, helping to steer conversations about work-based learning and facilitating transitions from school to career. Meaningfully, the Chamber’s board approved establishing a full-time staff position dedicated to exploring relevant partnerships with employers, and upholding schools in their efforts to deliver new meaningful work-related experiences for students.

Posted by Caroline Ridgway
UPSTART family with diploma
Early Learning Resources

Waterford UPSTART School-Readiness Program Offered Free to Collier County Families

Collier County families with children who will enter kindergarten during the 2020-2021 school year may be eligible to apply for free access to the Waterford UPSTART Summer Learning Path school-readiness program. Active across 15 states, UPSTART reaches the most at-risk kids in a community. In addition, program leaders are hoping to reach families whose income, employment, or access to federally funded preschool have been impacted by COVID-19.

Posted by Caroline Ridgway
Boys and Girls Club - meal distribution
News Resources Success Stories

The Boys & Girls Club of Collier County: Adapting in a Time of Need

On any given day during what we might now refer to as “normal” times, the Boys & Girls Club of Collier County would welcome 400 to 500 kids at their Immokalee facility, and 500 to 600 in Naples. The Collier County Boys & Girls Club, like its affiliates nationwide, provides an after-school and summer sanctuary for students. Programs encompass mentorship, academic learning, physical wellbeing, and personal development. The model embraced by the Boys & Girls Club is intended to provide essential supports for children who may for any reason lack access to that foundational structure in their personal and home lives. What’s more, it’s been shown to work.

Posted by Caroline Ridgway
Miss Kellie's ChildCare, Cape Coral
Early Learning News Resources

The Early Learning Coalition: Fostering Collaboration with Future Ready Collier

If an objective of early childhood education is helping kids learn the value of sharing and partnership, then a collective impact model is a real-world extension of that ideological premise. As the nonprofit tasked with distributing state funds for early learning providers regionally, the Early Learning Coalition is an essential partner in fostering the collaboration and momentum that are carrying Future Ready Collier steadily towards real change. Links between early learning and school readiness, through to career training and a thriving economy, are undeniable. The Early Learning Coalition lends expertise and vital community-level connection points to the initiative.

Posted by Caroline Ridgway
young girl reading
Early Learning Resources

Healthcare Network Provider Co-authors New Child’s Activity and Coloring Book

The Florida State University Center for Child Stress and Health published a new coloring and activity book, The Germ that Wears a Crown: A Story About the Coronavirus. Co-author Dr. Javier Rosado, who is the Director of Clinical Research for the FSU Center for Child Stress and Health located at the Immokalee Health Education Site, also works as a psychologist with the Healthcare Network. The Healthcare Network is a Future Ready Collier partner.

Posted by Caroline Ridgway