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Impact Story October 31, 2024

Opening Remarks at the Celebrating 10 Years of Fund for Quality Event

Opening remarks from LaToshia DeVose, Program Director of Early Childhood Education at Reinvestment Fund, at the Building Up Quality Care: Celebrating 10 Years of Fund for Quality Event at Pee Wee Prep, Philadelphia. 

“Good evening and welcome. It’s so great to be surrounded by friends, family, colleagues and those who have made it their life’s work to promote early care and learning.

Today we celebrate the efforts of Fund for Quality (FFQ) and everyone in this room in building up quality care.

How do you sum up 10 years of expanding high quality child care for all children by any means necessary? You really can’t, but the stats can speak for themselves:

Over 50 grantees and over 3,200 new seats created, many new jobs and hundreds of thousands of square feet developed.

But there’s many stories behind these seats, these projects and business owners than stats could ever tell…

There’s a lot of qualified early educators in this room, nurturing and developing our children, our future, but what you may not know is they were all kinds of hats and also in this room, we have lot of fierce negotiators, GCS , developers, innovators, visionaries, artists, perseverant and brave business owners and executives. Simply put VIPs!! Let’s give them some love.

 
 

To the 50+ FFQ grantees, you’re here today because you didn’t give up — you didn’t give up on the process (it’s a long, tough road and even the simplest of projects are never as cut and dry as we think), you didn’t give up on the children who need your care and education, your staff, your dream nor vision and most importantly you didn’t give up on YOU. Philadelphia has a brighter future thanks to all of you.

To the 50+ FFQ grantees, you’re here today because you didn’t give up — you didn’t give up on the process (it’s a long, tough road and even the simplest of projects are never as cut and dry as we think), you didn’t give up on the children who need your care and education, your staff, your dream nor vision and most importantly you didn’t give up on YOU. Philadelphia has a brighter future thanks to all of you.

Last but not least, I want to give a genuine thank you and appreciation for all of the program staff at Reinvestment Fund and PHMC who are equally committed to seeing these projects through and supporting providers in the ways you need. We’re grateful to for our wonderful and skilled partners at PHMC whom we’ve worked hand in hand and have collaborated on every aspect and decision of FFQ and whom we could not achieve such great impact without.

And there would be no FFQ without the vision and generous funding to the tune of over $26 million from no other than the William Penn foundation and contributions by Vanguard Strong Start for Kids program.”

You can learn more about FFQ here.

See our Press Release here.

View our Photo Gallery

Special thanks to Torian Studios for capturing the day, The Workshop School for crafting all over our swag, The Pee Wee Prep staff for hosting us and the students for their lovely performance, and all funders, partners, and providers who made this celebration possible!

Meet the FFQ Team:

 
 
LaToshia DeVose
Program Director, Early Childhood Education
 
 
Karen Bustard
Senior Program Manager
 
 
Jacob Kurtz
Program Manager, Early Childhood Education

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