Director’s Message: A Year of Change
Dear friends,
In 2023, Milwaukee Succeeds experienced significant changes. Our former executive director, Danae Davis, retired in 2022, and I inherited an incredible opportunity to serve my community in a different way.
The Milwaukee Succeeds team and our colleagues at the Greater Milwaukee Foundation (GMF) are courageous, committed and convinced that by working together we can make Milwaukee greater.
We’ve set about doing that in a variety of ways, with the most important being our commitment to letting our lived experience partners guide the work. Since we aim to transform systems, it’s crucial that we involve those most impacted by these systems.
This year, our Early Childhood Education (ECE) and Youth Forward MKE Ambassadors stood up and stood out within the broader community. Whether it was our ECE Ambassadors speaking at the Joint Finance Committee’s listening session or our Youth Ambassadors presenting at a national youth conference, these incredible individuals provided insight, gained the courage to tell their own stories and made a lasting impression in the process.
Our engagement work was also recognized by two national funders. The Wallace Foundation is providing support for our high school success work, while the Kellogg Foundation was so impressed with our ECE Coalition that they provided a capacity-building grant which will help us prepare for the next round of budget discussions.
In addition, the funding we informed and helped secure over the past few years was put to use this year to support and stabilize the ECE sector. For example, the City of Milwaukee’s historic $7 million American Rescuee Plan Act (ARPA) investment into ECE has resulted in thousands of stipends to early educators. The Accreditation Facilitation Project, which we helped secure funding for, is also well underway, with two programs already receiving accreditation! This is an incredible step toward improving the quality of care in Milwaukee and expanding the number of high-quality slots, with hundreds of children set to benefit.
With the input of local youth, we also developed a Youth Adult Equity Assessment to help local organizations better serve Milwaukee’s young people. This is a first-of-its-kind tool in the Milwaukee area. Finally, we were instrumental in helping to provide culturally relevant behavioral health supports to ECE providers, as well as students at two local high schools. We believe these efforts will have a lasting impact on our students.
This work is made possible by our dedicated partners, our extraordinary team and our shared desire to create lasting change for children and families. Thank you to everyone who helped us move Milwaukee forward in 2023!
