Community partners helped purchase our new vision screener
At The Center Early Childhood Programs, we serve the very youngest learners in our community. Because of their young ages and limited communication skills, very young children can’t always let us know they are having trouble seeing or hearing, but having challenges in these areas can have big effects on how well a child learns. Vision, hearing, and developmental screenings are a part of the enrollment and beginning of the year process for all children in any program at The Center. This way, we can identify areas of a child’s development where they may need some extra support to learn, grow, and blossom into the best people they can be.
Recently, The Center needed to purchase a new vision screener. The one we had been using was reaching the end of its usable life. We also needed to upgrade to a machine that could screen infants and toddlers in addition to preschoolers to accommodate kids and families in our new Early Head Start program.
Medical equipment, like a vision screener, is costly. Big purchases like this can be a big strain on a preschool budget already providing services to families. That is why The Center reached out to other community organizations for assistance in making this important purchase.
We would like to extend our most heartfelt thanks to the Trail 100 Legacy Foundation and the Leadville Race Series for their $2500 gift toward the purchase of our new vision screener. The Legacy Foundation also supports our early childhood program by sponsoring a holiday party each December that warms the hearts of all our children, families, staff, and everyone associated with the race series and the foundation. We appreciate the additional gift this year and are grateful for their confidence that we will put it to good use.
We would also like to Thank the Lions Club for their gift of $3450 for the vision screener. You may know that the Lions Club supports healthy vision projects all over the world, and they were so gracious in helping us to provide vision screenings right here at home as well. The older vision screener we had been using before the new purchase was owned by the Lions and will be repurposed to further vision health.
The new screener will also be used to evaluate children whose parents request developmental screenings through Child Find, a program which offers free developmental screenings to families of children aged birth through 8 to identify developmental delays. The screener machine can be used on older children, and will likely be used by the Lake County School District school nurse for other needs.
We at The Center are so blessed to be a part of a caring community that prioritizes the needs of young children and families. Thank you to everyone who works with and supports the Trail 100 Legacy Foundation and the Lions Club who in turn support our mission also.