We’re proud to announce the new initiatives, opportunities and programs provided by two generous grants from our funder-partners at the William K. Kellogg Foundation and the Institute for Mental Hygiene.

Impacting School Readiness in NOLA

The William K. Kellogg Foundation is helping us to ensure that by 2020, every child in New Orleans enters school ready to learn. We’re mobilizing the community for optimal child development using the vulnerability and asset data collected through the Early Development Instrument. If you’ve followed our work over the last few years, this will sound familiar — we’ve collected development data on over 65% of New Orleans’ kindergarten-age children, and we’re excited to bring that number even higher this fall!

Building a Cadre of Change Agents

OPEN announces the launch of a two-generational strategy to building stronger voices for children – Family Leadership Training Institute. This fall, in partnership with the Institute of Mental Hygiene and the W.K.Kellogg Foundation, OPEN will expand its current PLTI program to serve children between the ages of 3 – 12 with the Children’s Leadership Training Institute, and merge the programs under one umbrella: the Family Leadership Training Institute.

Building on a best-practice national model, FLTI takes a two-generational approach to building the leadership and voice that is needed to strengthen families, improve child outcomes, and strengthen advocacy to improve multi-sector family-serving agencies – education, health, and social services. At a time, when our city grapples with persistent child poverty rates, and gun-violence. FLTI is turning the tide at the anchor institution – the family!