The K-Ready Community Project 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 Project is uniting the community under the K-Ready Alliance 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!
-- The K-Ready Project Team
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 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.
Lauren has been a lifelong advocate for education, focusing on equity for children living in low-income communities, with a long career in teaching, policy, and non-profit management.
Starting her career as a middle school teacher in Los Angeles, Lauren then worked in education equity policy in L.A. and Tallahassee and most-recently was the founding executive director of Teach for America, Orlando.
Lauren is a graduate of the University of Florida and holds a Master of Public Policy degree from the University of Southern California.
The K-Ready Advisory Committees are diverse groups of leaders and stakeholders from all sectors that are committed to our mission to become a K-Ready Community.
Facilitated by Minga Advisors, they work together to create a common vision and a collective plan of action and provide strategic oversight and resources to carry out the long-term plan to transform the system of early care and education.