What started as 2,100 ideas to address the 2014 Lincoln Vital Signs findings, turned into a focused community agenda to lift Lincoln higher. Lincoln Community Foundation President, Barbara Bartle, highlighted many of the recent success at the Prosper Lincoln Summit.
The progress to date is due to a true community-wide effort across all sectors. Individuals and organizations have stepped up to make progress toward these goals, including neighborhoods, businesses, schools, faith organizations, nonprofits and more. Michelle Suarez, Bryan Seck and Rich Claussen have been waking up every day to move the agenda forward as Prosper Lincoln Developers since 2016.
In the area of Early Childhood:
- The community raised nearly $640,000 on Lincoln Littles Giving Day, allowing 110 children from low-income families access to a high-quality early childhood education. This combined with other efforts working to increase capacity resulted in over 1,400 additional children being enrolled in programs on the path to quality since 2016
- 71 providers progressed to meet Step Up to Quality state guidelines and will provide quality early learning opportunities to the nearly 4,595 children they serve.
- 36,000 books were donated to over 2,000 families through Read Aloud Lincoln.
In the area of Employment Skills:
- Over 200 businesses, 20 workforce agencies, hundreds of job seekers and case managers have transformed connections between businesses and nonprofits through EmployLNK.
- World Education Services selected Lincoln as one of eight communities in the country to implement the Skilled Immigrant Integration Program.
- 21,000 middle and high school students are connected to opportunities through the Jobs and Extended Learning Opportunities online portal.
In the area of Innovation & Entrepreneurship:
- Over 6,000 high school students took an assessment to discover their strengths and propensity to build as part of the Future Builders Challenge.
- The Reverse Pitch & State of the Practice events connected over 1,000 college students to businesses that have tech jobs and internships available.
- A Digital Inclusion Taskforce has outlined next steps to providing crucial internet access to everyone in our community.
The next phase of Prosper Lincoln looks to prioritize the community’s strengths and challenges and then concentrate public, private and philanthropic human and financial resources toward the city’s common goals.