The Current Issue:

Other benefits include offerings of healthy snack options (children that are alone after school tend to consume more junk food), more exercise (as opposed to hours spent in front of a TV or video game system), extended learning opportunities, and raising of self-confidence.

Studies have found that adolescents who do not participate in any out of school activities are:

• Twice as likely to smoke cigarettes
• Seven times more likely to have carried a gun to school
• Twice as likely to report that they have driven while drunk
• Nearly three times more likely to use drugs
• And twice as likely to have shoplifted

NCEF’s Contribution to a Solution:

The need is even greater in Immokalee where out-of-schools are only reaching a fraction of the children most in need. NCEF has committed to assisting in bringing Boys & Girls Club out-of-school programs to Immokalee and to support in the construction of a Boys & Girls Club facility which will be built on land contiguous to both the middle and high schools making it most accessible to those neediest children. The Boys & Girls Club offers signature services such as:

• Tutorial services
• Healthy living and skill building exercises
• Arts & crafts activities
• Social recreation and game rooms
• Athletic development programs
• Computer instruction

The Current Issue:

NCEF’s Contribution to a Solution:
To help remedy this paradox, the goal of this initiative is to establish a network of 60 family child care homes to care for 300 children, ranging in age from birth to 3 years old. The proposal includes subsidies for children in need of scholarship so they may enroll in child care. NCEF has committed to underwriting scholarships for these 300 children. A portion of the committed scholarship funds will be matched $16.00 by the state of Florida for every $1.00 NCEF commits. In addition, NCEF has partnered with Child Care of Southwest Florida to insure a high level of quality control.

Before these children can be placed in the child care network, teachers and supervisors must be found and trained, and their homes made ready to accept the children. To accomplish this, the professional development component of the Early Childhood Development Strategic Initiative includes:

• Incentives for teachers to become certified, accredited, and licensed – at this time 89 percent of early learning centers in Collier County are NOT accredited.
• Scholarship opportunities for teachers so that they may attend continuing education classes at the local universities and colleges, which are often cost prohibitive for these service providers.

The Current Issue:

In 2006, nearly 41.5 percent of Collier County resident births were with less than adequate prenatal care.  Low-income women are among those most at risk for delivering low birth weight babies.  They tend to use prenatal care less, perceive more barriers to care, have less positive reinforcement for receiving care, have less access to care, have lower education levels, maintain less healthy lifestyles, and have lower compliance with medical recommendations.

NCEF’s Contribution to a Solution:

NCEF’s investment will fund renovations to a 29,000-square-foot medical clinic in Immokalee that had been donated to FSU by Naples Community Hospital Healthcare System in 2007.  The building had originally been donated to NCH Healthcare by Isabel Collier Read in an effort to ensure that the medical needs of the community’s farm workers and other underserved residents would be met.  After the deed on the property was transferred to FSU, Read endowed the medical school’s educational program in Immokalee with an additional gift. The gifts from Read and NCEF are eligible for state matching funds, which could push the combined value of all three gifts to more than $13 million.