Homegrown Selected for Award from Austin Public Health

Last year I learned about a healthy schools initiative called “Austin Healthy ECE Partnership Program.”

This Austin Public Health program collaborates with Texas A&M and a national program called GoNAAPSAC to offer selected licensed Travis County centers the opportunity to enhance health practices by:

💻 Granting free access to (otherwise pricey) tools and training modules on healthy eating, physical activity, outdoor learning and overall development

🤝🏼 Pairing us with an APH guide to support us in our plan-of-action and give technical assistance where needed

💰 A monetary award for improvements in our school

Selected centers are asked to conduct thorough self assessments provided by the named agencies to identify areas they can improve and will collaborate with a health specialist in creating a plan for deepening their knowledge and developing their play and learning spaces.

Upon completion of the program, the schools would then be endorsed as a “Healthy ECE” (Early Childhood Education) center by each of these agencies, which to us would be an honor.

I submitted an application for Homegrown to be considered in October. After not hearing for months and thinking we just didn’t make the first cut, I received word that we’d been selected for a Discovery Interview! We learned then that the stipend was for $2500 and we were so excited about potential improvements to our outdoor spaces.

A week into February I got to meet with APH’s Public Health Program Coordinator and shared Homegrown, our mission, our vision the community we’ve fostered and our desire to be lifelong learners. The interview went really well and though I was told they were selecting 2-3 schools out of over 200 by the end of the month, we held out hope for a couple weeks.

This afternoon we learned we were selected!! APH praised Homegrown’s current efforts and practices and told us they were thrilled to work with us and support our growth.

We are elated to have been chosen and supported and are looking forward to sharing ideas, new things we’ll learn, general updates and an improved space with our community! 💚