Community Partners Launch the Danbury Collective

Danbury, Connecticut (January 16, 2024) — At a community meeting earlier this month, nearly two dozen Danbury area community members, parents, as well as nonprofit, municipal, and school leaders came together to announce the launch of the Danbury Collective, a citywide collective impact initiative designed to address the challenges facing Danbury’s children and youth by aligning resources and working collaboratively at a systems level to improve outcomes for all.

“We are proud to announce the launch of the Danbury Collective, a multi-stakeholder collaboration that will aim to ensure that all children and families have full and equal access to opportunities to be successful in life,” said Isabel Almeida, President and CEO of United Way of Coastal and Western Connecticut. “Thanks to seed funding by the Nellie Mae Education Foundation, we will work together with parents, students, and partners from government, business, nonprofits, and philanthropy to ensure that all our children thrive, from cradle to career.”

The Danbury Collective will initially focus on improving equity and outcomes for students in three key focus areas: early childhood education, chronic absenteeism and learner engagement, and youth mental health. These priorities were identified by community partners, school leaders, and parents as the top areas of concern, and will evolve if and as community needs change.

The partners explained the rationale. “A child’s early years lay the foundation for all future learning, behavior, and health,” said Katie Curran, President and Chief Executive Officer at Connecticut Institute for Communities, and Co-Chair of the Collective’s Advisory Council. “By age 5, a child’s brain has grown to 90% of its adult size. Today, only 25% of Danbury children start kindergarten ‘most prepared to succeed’ in the areas of literacy, numeracy, and language. We’re dedicated to changing that.”

National research shows that – at every age—chronic absenteeism erodes both academic and social skills, notably, the ability to read at grade level, perform academically, or to graduate on time. In fact, in sixth grade, chronic absenteeism is a key early indicator of a student’s dropping out of high school before graduation. According to Danbury Superintendent of Schools Kevin Walston, “In Danbury today, almost 15.7% of children miss school on a regular basis. We must address the many underlying factors for their absence.”

In addition to early education and chronic absenteeism, the Danbury Collective will also focus on promoting mental health. Kara Prunty, Director of Health and Human Services at the City of Danbury and Co-Chair of the Collective’s Advisory Council noted, “The US Surgeon General has sounded the alarm on the mental health of our children. Today, more than 1 in 5 children from ages 3 to 17 have a mental, emotional, developmental, or behavioral disorder,” citing data from the National Institute of Health. Prunty added, “While mental health issues are widespread and challenging, they are also treatable and often preventable. However, meaningful change will require a comprehensive, collaborative effort evaluating policy, systems, and community supports.

The Danbury Collective will be led by Melissa Hannequin, serving as founding Executive Director. A Bethel native and long-time resident, Hannequin brings critical experience and skills in early childhood educational policy and operations, strategic planning, partner collaboration, and community outreach to solve common goals. Most recently, she served New York City Public Schools for more than six years in their citywide universal preschool initiative, “3-K and Pre-K for All.” There, her role was to work closely with school officials, city agencies, and community partners to expand families’ access to free, high-quality preschool and special education programming and to meet community needs. And she knows the local community needs well, since she served United Way as a Community Impact Coordinator for Danbury early in her career.

“I am eager to work towards ensuring that all children and families in Danbury have an equitable opportunity to be successful in life,” said Hannequin. “To reach that goal, we must work collectively--in alignment with both community partners and community members, and in response to our community’s specific needs. We must also work both locally and at the systems level to make long-term, lasting change.” Hannequin holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology and International Studies from Fairfield University and a Master of Science degree in public policy and management from Carnegie Mellon University.

Hannequin has three immediate priorities for the Collective: first, to deepen the partnerships with Danbury leaders, community organizations and parents that have already signed on to the cause; second, to spread the word about the value of the collective impact model and engage more community members and families; and third, to work with other collective impact groups already making a difference in the state.

The Danbury Collective plans to become the fifth StriveTogether collective impact initiative in the state of Connecticut—the fourth in United Way of Coastal and Western Connecticut’s service area. “I look forward to collaborating with our sister initiatives in Bridgeport, Stamford, Norwalk, and Waterbury to improve the trajectory of all Connecticut children,” said Hannequin. StriveTogether is a national, nonprofit network of about 70 collective impact movements, which provides a collective impact approach and related Theory of Action. Their nationally recognized Theory of Action is centered on four pillars: shared community vision, evidence-based decision making, collaborative action, and investment sustainability.

United Way of Coastal and Western Connecticut serves as the backbone fiduciary of the Danbury Collective as well as two other StriveTogether initiatives – Bridgeport Prospers and Stamford Cradle to Career – providing funding, fiduciary services, managing back-office operations, and supporting strategic success through thought partnership and collaboration.

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ABOUT UNITED WAY OF COASTAL AND WESTERN CONNECTICUT

United Way of Coastal and Western Connecticut (UWCWC) empowers low-to-moderate-income households to thrive by mobilizing the resources of local communities to create lasting change. UWCWC leverages evidence-based strategies and strategic partnerships to improve outcomes in 3 key focus areas — education and child care, health and food security, financial stability, and basic needs — while creating systemic change for the 40% of families living at or below the ALICE® threshold (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed). UWCWC serves 27 communities across Fairfield and Southern Litchfield Counties, including the Cities of Bridgeport, Danbury, Norwalk, and Stamford, and the Towns of Bethel, Bridgewater, Brookfield, Darien, Easton, Fairfield, Kent, Monroe, New Canaan, New Fairfield, New Milford, Newtown, Redding, Ridgefield, Roxbury, Sherman, Stratford, Trumbull, Warren, Washington, Westport, Wilton, and Weston, Connecticut. For more information about United Way of Coastal and Western Connecticut, visit www.unitedwaycwc.org. Like us on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter. Follow us on Instagram. Watch us on YouTube.

ABOUT DANBURY COLLECTIVE

The Danbury Collective is a cradle to career collective impact, community-led initiative dedicated to ensuring that all children and families in Danbury have full and equal access to opportunities to be successful in life. It is a network of community members, organizations, and institutions who advance equity by learning together, aligning, and integrating their actions to achieve population and systems level change. It is a movement of people impacted by and impacting a challenge who share power, trust, resources, and effort to achieve a common purpose. Collective work contributes to building and sustaining the civic infrastructure necessary to improve outcomes and close gaps from cradle to career. The Danbury Collective has convened a diverse group of community members, parents, nonprofits, school leadership, and municipal leadership to explore the systems and processes that benefit the children and families of the Danbury community and have looked at data to guide the undertaking of key initiatives to support the growth and development of Danbury’s children. The work of the Danbury Collective will be based on listening to student, parent, and community voices to determine the root causes of differences in opportunities enabling all to thrive and become successful by removing conditions adversely affecting educational equity. The new Danbury Collective website will launch in the coming weeks – more information to come soon. Community members who are interested in getting involved with the Danbury Collective are encouraged to view and submit the membership agreement here: https://forms.office.com/r/2WKD0qfeVm.