About The Tribal Early Learning Initiative

Tribal early childhood development programs that serve young children and their families, including Head Start/Early Head Start, child care, and home visiting, have historically been developed in “patchwork” fashion in response to specific needs. They frequently have separate funding sources, standards, regulations, and governance structures. Early childhood grants to Tribal Nations generally originate with the federal government. Three of the primary programs, Head Start, the Child Care and Development Fund, and the Maternal Infant and Early Childhood Home Visiting program, are administered by the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Over the past decade, ACF has created a Tribal Early Learning Initiative to support more coordinated early childhood systems in American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) communities. Two cohorts of Tribal early childhood leaders worked together in peer cohorts on early childhood systems building in 2012 and 2017. In 2022, ACF solicited interest in a third TELI cohort from all Tribal grantees of the Child Care and Development Fund (the program with the widest reach). Forty-nine Tribes expressed interest in working on system-building activities and eight opted into intensive technical assistance provided by ACF which created the ECFC/NAP/ACF Public Private Collaboration.

ECFC/NAP/ACF Public Private Collaboration

As ACF launches a third cohort of intensive technical assistance and peer networking, Native Americans in Philanthropy (NAP) and the Early Childhood Funders Collaborative (ECFC) pursued a public- private partnership collaboration to support the Tribal Early Learning Initiative Grantees. NAP and ECFC are also co-convening an Indigenous Early Childhood Work Group of approximately 10 funders who are working on indigenous early childhood, which serves as a collaboration incubator for this effort.

The partnership is designed to:

• Support tribes to coordinate Tribal early learning and development programs;

• Create and support seamless, high-quality early childhood systems;

• Raise the quality of services to children and families across the pregnancy-to-kindergarten-entry continuum; and

• Identify and break down barriers to collaboration and systems improvement.

The Administration for Children and Families has dedicated staff time and significant contributions from their technical assistance providers. In collaboration with ECFC/NAP Indigenous Workgroup Members, ECFC supported an in-person convening of TELI grantees to strengthen the opportunity for peer sharing and learning in November 2023.

Native Americans in Philanthropy has committed to conduct pre- and post-interviews with each Grantee, develop interim and final reports, and engage in creative dissemination strategies to ensure that successes, highlights, and lessons learned are shared broadly.

Together, ECFC and NAP are seeking to provide equitable supplemental mini grants to each grantee that provide flexible funding to support program activities.

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