The voices of K-ready

The K-Ready Alliance

The K-Ready Community Alliance is a collaborative effort and a movement to make early childhood a priority in Orange County and ensure that EVERY child has a strong start and a bright future.

Ninety-percent of brain development occurs in the first five years, yet half of children in our community do not receive the care and education they need to be ready for kindergarten. These children that start off behind often never catch up and are more likely to drop out of school and struggle with poverty, homelessness, and health issues the rest of their lives.

To address these issues we face today -- poverty, inequity, crime, low-skilled workforce; the answer is simple -- START EARLY!

By engaging leaders and citizens from all sectors, the K-Ready Alliance is uniting the community to make early childhood a top priority and to build a better system of care and education for ALL young children so that EVERY child has a strong start and a bright future.

Together, K-Ready is driving transformative change with a shared vision and plan of action through advocacy, collaboration, and a systems approach to problem solving.

Every child deserves the chance to succeed! Join the K-Ready Alliance and...

Be a VOICE for Children!

-- Leslie Hartog, Director of The K-Ready Community Alliance

The K-Ready COMMUNITY ALLIANCE team

Minga Advisors, LLC

Minga Advisors, a collective impact and social change agency, serves as the backbone of the project -- facilitating the collaborative work, implementing a plan of action, and building a broad alliance to drive policy and systems change.

Leslie Hartog, K-Ready Alliance Director

Leslie is the founder of Minga Advisors and has been a systems engineering and strategic planning consultant with over 30 years of experience with Walt Disney World, national parks and museums, and local non-profits. She is passionate about taking a systems approach to solve big, hairy, and important social problems and believes that the broken system of care and education for young children should be a top priority in this community.

Leslie is a past chair of 100 Women Strong, a women's giving circle and an initiative of the Central Florida Foundation. She has a systems engineering degree from Georgia Tech and an MBA from the University of Central Florida.

Early Learning Shared Services Alliance

Early Learning Shared Services Alliance (ELSSA) is the fiscal sponsor and program administrator for the K-Ready Community Alliance.

ELSSA's experienced team provides childcare centers and home-based providers with centralized back-office support, so that providers can grow their businesses, achieve financial stability and focus on quality programming and education.

The Early Learning Shared Services Alliance was created to help child care Business Owners and Directors reduce their administrative load, increase their revenues, and have the resources they need to hire and retain talented teachers, devote more funds to curriculum, staff training and development, and improve the overall quality of care and education.

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