Making Small Moments Big for Children’s Early Brain Development: The Clinton Foundation & Too Small to Fail

This webinar, a part of the CGLR Funder to Funder Conversations series, featured the Too Small to Fail public awareness and action campaign of the Clinton Foundation. The presentations explored how philanthropic and community partners are leveraging the campaign’s tools to communicate the importance of talking, reading and singing with young children and provide families with the tools to engage in language-rich interactions during daily moments.

Chelsea Clinton, Vice Chair of the Clinton Foundation, offered opening comments, explaining how Too Small to Fail is rooted in the research of brain science and the belief that every child deserves to have strong, resilient scaffolding that includes love, support and lots of language-rich interactions with the adults in their lives.

Patti Miller, Chief Executive Officer of Too Small to Fail, explained how her relatively small staff works with a wide range of strategic partners to advance three key strategies to support children’s early brain and language development: 1) harnessing the power of media; 2) building local community campaigns; and 3) transforming spaces into language-rich environments. Through partnerships with Univision, Spotify and other entertainment entities, they are integrating messages about early language and literacy development into the TV shows and media that families are already consuming. She described how Too Small to Fail is supporting local Talk, Read, Sing campaigns in 32 communities and one statewide effort in Michigan, helping local leaders engage trusted messengers, share high-quality tools and resources, and utilize environmental prompts to encourage families to engage in language-rich conversations with their young children. With a goal of developing evidence-based programs that hold the potential to be scaled broadly, she also highlighted what they are learning from early evaluations of some of these strategies.

Jane Park Woo, Director of Too Small to Fail, offered a number of examples of the types of places the team is helping to transform into spaces that encourage brain-building language-rich interactions. She shared how the partners have already transformed more than 700 playgrounds, 12 hospitals and 5,000+ laundromats, adding that they are also applying these messaging tools in family court waiting rooms, social service agencies and more.

Brian Wallace, Executive Director of LaundryCares Foundation, described how that foundation’s partnership with Too Small to Fail came about and why it resonated with the membership of the Coin Laundry Association. He explained why the geographic locations of laundromats, often in low-income communities, and the repeat visits and extended stay times of their clientele made laundromats a great place to support learning and literacy. He also shared a number of visual examples of what the transformed laundromats look like and the ways laundromat owners are engaging community partners to support children’s learning.

Akshara Vivekananthan, Assistant Director of Education at the United Way of the Greater Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania, shared how Talk, Read, Sing has been integrated into the Lehigh Valley Reads Campaign. Providing a local example of the strategies Miller and Woo described, she explained how local partners are leveraging the local public broadcasting station, billboards, bus shelters, social media and Trusted Messengers to communicate messages about early language and brain development. The local campaign is also engaging the direct service professionals that work with families and local businesses to share resources and encourage language-rich interactions. United Way is integrating these efforts into its other impact goals, partnering with homeless shelters and food distribution sites to reinforce the messaging.

Shannon Riley-Ayers, Senior Program Officer at The Nicholson Foundation, offered another local example of this work. She described how she had worked with other local funders and partners to integrate Talk, Read, Sing into the Paterson Reads campaign in New Jersey at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Unable to meet in person, they worked with Too Small to Fail to create a virtual Trusted Messenger training that enabled them to engage many more messengers. Working closely with the local school district and the Paterson Education Fund, they are distributing messages via social media and delivering tote bags with high-quality resources to families.

Both Vivekananthan and Riley-Ayers stressed how the Talk, Read, Sing campaign is having a positive impact on children’s resiliency and early relational health during the disruptions posed by the pandemic. Although it was designed as a strategy to promote school readiness, they explained how the daily interactions prompted by the campaign’s messages support positive relationships that can provide a buffer to protect children from toxic stress and trauma.

Miller, Woo and Wallace shared how funders and community leaders could learn more about these initiatives and bring these campaigns and resources to their communities.