Early Childhood Consortium

The South Ward Children's Alliance (SWCA) is a community-based organization that coordinates and integrates early childhood and school programs and other initiatives and services for children in Newark's South Ward. SWCA is a project of B.R.I.C.K. (Building Responsible Intelligent Creative Kids), which operates two elementary schools in the South Ward. SWCA is based in large part on the Harlem Children's Zone approach.

This project continues earlier Nicholson support for SWCA’s Family College, a nine-week parenting education program that combines early child development and parenting skills workshops with home visits to help support expectant parents as well as parents and caregivers of children from birth to age three in the South Ward. In addition, this project supports evidence-based home visiting programs, efforts to improve the quality of early care and education programs, and pre- and postnatal health services. The work supported by this grant and four other local funders comprises the early childhood component of a recent five-year Promise Neighborhood grant received by the SWCA. Reinforcing the projects supported by Nicholson, SWCA has developed partnership agreements with more than twenty agencies to provide comprehensive child and family services, with the ultimate goal of increasing the number of children entering elementary school healthy and ready to learn.

Learn more about the South Ward Children’s Alliance.