Building Strong Brains is focused on helping the youngest members of our community be ready to succeed when they enter kindergarten.

The community initiative that launched in November 2022 is taking the long view to get there — both in assessing what we have and directing where we go as a community.

“The whole point is to look at this from the systems perspective and align the great work already happening in Elkhart County,” says Kimberly Boynton, the first coalition director for Building Strong Brains.

She is employed by the Community Foundation to work in conjunction with Horizon Education Alliance; The Source, hosted by Oaklawn; CAPS – Child and Parent Services; and Crossroads United Way. The five organizations, with guidance from the Tamarack Institute, worked together over the last several years to launch this initiative.

More than 50 percent of children in Elkhart County arrive at kindergarten without the necessary tools to succeed. This initiative is focused on building a comprehensive, systems-based approach to helping them do so.

Boynton joined the team on June 1, though she has been part of the work to help young people in our community succeed for a number of years. She has worked primarily as a speech language pathologist for young children. As her career progressed, it expanded beyond direct services to young children and she has worked for nonprofits, public education, and higher education in the South Bend – Elkhart Region. As a practitioner in this field, she joined conversations in the early stages of Building Strong Brains. This spring, she was invited to become the coalition director.

“This is an opportunity that is so different than what we’ve done before and we have a real chance to impact the lives of young children and their families,” she says.

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Boynton is collaborating with members of a steering team to guide the next phase of the work. Building Strong Brains is seeking grants to help fund this far-reaching change in Elkhart County. Even grant writing is collaborative as entities join together to apply.

She is recruiting and inviting a range of folks from Elkhart County to join a community advisory team that will guide the system-level work. This group of key leaders from business, education, and nonprofit backgrounds will join together with parents and experts in early childhood development. Together, they will collaborate to understand our current situation through a system lens and help our community move toward transformative change. Collective efforts across the community will be required to achieve the outcomes all our children deserve.

Boynton and others are pleased with the progress the community is making and also emphasize that this work will take at least a decade and likely longer.

“I think people are excited about the comprehensive systems shift,” she says. “I think people are noticing a difference in a more comprehensive focus. I’ve heard more people say we’re right on the cusp of something because we’re looking at this differently and looking at it together. We are genuinely hopeful.”

This story appeared in the 2023 Annual Report.