Poverty is one of the largest threats to a child’s development, and one goal at Great Plains Youth and Family Services (GPYFS) in Hobart, OK, is to provide fair and equitable outcomes for children and families despite poverty and income levels. GPYFS serves Kiowa, Washita, Beckham, Greer, Jackson and Tillman counties.
To address the shortage of quality childcare in southwestern Oklahoma and provide opportunities for children to achieve developmental milestones, GPYFS opened the Great Plains Early Learning Center (GPELC) in August 2023, where they provide care for 46 children ages 6 weeks to 5 years. Of the $20,000 grant funding, $10,000 will provide for new literacy libraries for each of the five classrooms, new materials for the numeracy specialist in the preschool classrooms and continued outdoor learning efforts on the playground to prepare the children to enter school on grade level and ready to learn.
The remainder of the grant funding will go towards literacy efforts and restocking of the community resource closet for the GPYFS home visitation program that serves children pre-birth to age five. The community resource closet is stocked with diapers, wipes, clothes, breast pumps, hygiene products, thermometers, fire extinguishers, carbon monoxide detectors and more.