195. Building Foundational Skills Through Early Education with Waterford UPSTART

Season 6 Episode 38: In this podcast, Pete Codella, managing director of business services at the Governor's Office of Economic Opportunity, talks with Kim Fischer, executive vice president of marketing and communications, Tomas Caceres, senior director of strategic community engagement at Waterford, and Anju Thapaliya UPSTART program manager at GOEO. Fischer, Caceres, and Thapaliya discuss the UPSTART Program, an online educational tool that provides preschool children with foundational skills in reading, math, and science. This tool is made possible through state funding and a partnership with Waterford. UPSTART collaborates with local organizations to extend its reach in Utah's rural, refugee, and Indigenous communities. Delivering this tool in homes and childcare settings helps UPSTART strengthen families and boost community engagement, giving young children a strong start in learning and development.  The Waterford team discusses its future goals to expand access to underserved communities, increase enrollment, and build partnerships to ensure all children have an early learning foundation. Fischer emphasizes that the COVID-19 pandemic exposed inequities in access to digital resources, affecting early learning and literacy nationwide, especially for marginalized communities. They discuss how UPSTART addresses these gaps by providing adaptive learning tools, a dashboard for tracking progress, and extensive family support.