Data Report for Fiscal Year 2023 (July 1, 2022 – June 30, 2023).
This year SPARK supported a record number of families and children!
OUR IMPACT
The Week of the Young Child 2023
We hosted our annual Week of the Young Child resource fair with 15 community
partners on April 22, 2023 at the Fox Valley Mall. We estimate around 800 people attended and they received resources from our partners, developmental screenings and also got ample opportunities to engage in parent-child activities provided by SPARK and other partner agencies.
FAMILY GATEWAY INTERVIEWS
Families are asked in all our activities if they would like to participate in a Family Gateway Interview. The interviews help us determine if they are interested in enrolling in an EC program and their eligibility for publicly funded programs. It also helps us to determine if they have any need or request for support their whole family. Our goal was 114 interviews for the fiscal year. To date we have completed over 300 interviews with families.
PARENT TESTIMONY
Parent testimony used in a video created by Illinois Action for Children, from Lizbeth Rodriguez (translated from the original Spanish)
My name is Liz, this is my daughter Allison. Allison is almost 2. She loves drawing on everything, playing with her toy food and learning new words. She likes learning about fruit. I am a first time mom and an only child from my parents. The Opening Doors (Abriendo Puertas) program helped me learn from other parents. I didn’t understand the importance of reading to my baby, my parents never did that for me. I’m so grateful to have the opportunity to do better for Allison. The parenting and play groups have helped Allison grow faster than I could have imagined. Before she only had interaction with her dad and I. Now, she’s talking. She’s less shy. She’s open to learning new things.