Providing care for young children doesn’t just change their lives, it changes society. A Rotarian in Louisiana, USA, found a way to make donors see that.
By Etelka Lehoczky
ABOVE: Patrick Moore, a member of the Rotary Club of Alexandria, Louisiana, USA, found a novel way to raise funds for early childhood education in his community.
A business case for childcare
Moore and other members of his Rotary club had been looking for ways to support early childhood education for some time. When they heard about the matching grant, sponsored by the local Rapides Foundation, they were shocked to learn the deadline was only four months away. But Moore thought a sense of urgency might motivate exhausted local donors to give. Knowing many were business owners like himself, he decided to make a business case for donating.
“I put together a kind of investment plan. I went to different entities and said, ‘I’m going to give you an opportunity to invest,’” he says. “When you ask these businesses, ‘What do you need?’ they say, ‘Oh my gosh, we need workers.’ Well, by paying for early childhood education, we’re basically planting seeds. This money will help our community have a stronger workforce in the future.”
Once Moore got people to think that far ahead, his pitch proved irresistible.
“One person, when I told them that, said, ‘Wait a minute, this is like a recruitment and retention program,’” Moore says. “I said, ‘Bingo, baby! You’ve got it.’”
The Alexandria club members also contributed substantially. Led by 2023-24 President Katie Vanderlick, the club agreed to donate $20,000 from its own small foundation. Individual members contributed around $20,000 more. Several of them had already been working with local organizations and the state government to bring more funding into the community. “Early childhood is a foundation for all the learning that takes place later,” says club member and former District Governor Cindy Cespiva. “And it makes a huge difference to families when parents have that opportunity to put their child in a quality setting. They can go to work and not have to worry about childcare.”
Including Moore’s efforts, Rotary members raised close to $500,000 by the deadline. The Rapides Foundation matched that sum, and then the state government matched the total. Ultimately, the $500,000 that Moore and his club helped raise became $2 million for early childhood education scholarships in Rapides Parish.
‘She’s going to do big things. I can feel it.’
Moore met one of the recipients of those scholarships through the director of a childcare center in his neighborhood. Angel Sands has her three-year-old daughter Ryatt enrolled at the center.
“I was so relieved when I found out about the scholarship program. I was calling around to different day cares, trying to figure out how much I would be looking at paying, and I couldn’t afford it,” Sands says. “The program has done a world of good for me.”
Once she could afford childcare, Sands was able to take classes to obtain her general high school equivalency diploma. She’s currently training to become a medical assistant, a profession she’s chosen because of a tragedy in her own life. In 2018 she lost her nine-day-old son to sepsis. She believes he died because of errors made by medical staff and hopes she can learn to do better for other mothers. While she’s in class, she’s glad to know Ryatt is receiving top-notch care.
“They have a great curriculum for the kids,” she says. “My kid comes home telling me the days of the month, and I’m like, ‘OK, wait, you’re three!’ She’s going to do big things. I can feel it.”
That depends partly on the more immediate future. The Rapides Foundation, the Rotary Club of Alexandria, and around 50 community partners have committed to raise funds for three more years’ worth of scholarships. Beyond that, the fate of early childhood education in Rapides is less certain. Rushing hopes increased awareness will translate into support for more funding at the state level.
Moore continues to let donors know their money is working for them. Recently he created a Return On Investment report about the grant, just to keep things businesslike.
“Often, if you fund a park or something, there’s a ribbon cutting and a picture in the newspaper. And then six months later the park’s overgrown, and it’s like, ‘What happened?’” he says. “So I sent out an ROI report to say, ‘Here’s what we did with your money,’ just to show that longer term impact. That’s how they think at the corporate level. They’re always thinking about the bigger picture.”
Learn more about Rotary’s commitment to basic education and literacy.
Thank You for Joining us as we dedicated Village of Northbrook's Rotary Peace Pole Last Week
& this Tuesday, September 16th we dedicate at Northbrook Bank & Trust
A Peace Pole is a monument that displays the message May Peace Prevail On Earthin the language of the country where it is placed. It usually displays 3 to 7 additional languages meaningful to the host site:
The message is referred to as an affirmation of peace and its placement furthers Rotary's goal of building a culture of peace throughout the world. Peace Poles are intended to inspire unity among people of all cultures, ethnicities, and backgrounds. We recommend a Peace Pole ceremony to accompany the planting of each pole and this ceremony can be held annually. Many prefer the International Day of Peace, September 21, for such an occasion.
The message May Peace Prevail On Earth was authored by the late Masahisa Goi of Japan after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is now an international message of peace with over 250,000 Peace Poles in every country in the world, dedicated as monuments to peace.
We welcome you planting your community Peace Pole and we will put it on our Rotary Peace Poles Map.
Our club has committed to Peace Poles in Northbrook, with the first one going up at Northbrook Bank & Trust, on Waukegan & Shermer to celebrate their 25th Anniversary, there is another going up on Walters and First (Shermer) at the Northbrook Chamber later this month.
Donna Lee has been a catalyst for propelling this project forward, meeting with the Community Commission. Our goal is to celebrate the Global Day of Peace on September 21st at Noon all time zones. More to come on that.
NOTE: All members are required to buy $100 worth of tickets or sell $100 in tickets.
VOLUNTEER TO SELL TICKETS & DAY OF:
Sign-Up Genius which describes the volunteer opportunities you may want to participate in for the Northbrook Rotary Rubber Ducky Race.
SELECT venues, dates and times in September for selling Rubber Ducky Tickets (this Wednesday - Denis will be at Sunset Foods from 1-4 PM -join him!!)
As you know 100% of what we raise goes back to the community and international projects.
RACE DAY SET UP HELP NEEDED TOO:
tent and booth,
ducky counts,
photography,
RILEE set up & education
river walking to collect ducks and
various other jobs on the day of the race
These venues are an excellent opportunity to promote Rotary membership to those ticket purchasers that show interest in what we do. Signs for the tables will also be provided.
Rotary Club of Northbrook Displays Polio Iron Lung on September 21st at Shermerfest!
he Rotary Club of Northbrook will portray polio’s terrible effects and global devastation by displaying a real iron lung, used widely in America in the 1940s and 1950s to keep many victims alive. It will be open to the public all day at Shermerfest. Neighbors are encouraged to view it, read background and ask questions.
Polio was the most widely feared disease in America and other nations in the mid-twentieth century. Hundreds of thousands of children were killed or crippled across 125 nations every year and American parents panicked over ways to protect their youngsters. Relief only came with invention of the Salk and Sabin vaccines, where near-universal immunization eventually slashed the number of victims and helped eradicate the disease from the Americas in 1994.
Similar efforts worldwide have cut the number of wild polio virus cases to less than 100 in 2024, and only in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
This worldwide public health campaign was developed by Rotary International, whose members brought vaccines to many nations and personally contributed over $2.7 billion over the decades. Rotary has since been joined by the World Health Organization; UNICEF; the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. Together, and with cooperation from the countries of the world, they mobilized global support, immunized three billion children and brought polio to the brink of eradication. Massive efforts today are hoping to totally end the polio scourge.
The Rotary Club of Northbrook recognizes that polio has not been completely wiped out and transmission can still happen via a disease carrier flying here from an affected region. Rotarians wanted to portray the terrible history, vast successes since the 1950s and how individuals today can support and even contribute to total global polio eradication.
Visitors to the Polio Iron Lung exhibit in Northbrook are very welcome.
