Check out what Children's Champions are doing in Meriden to promote the goal of getting all children to kindergarten healthy and ready for school success. Use their ideas to make a difference in your community and please tell us about it! click here to let us know what you're doing as a Children's Champion.

Marlene F Mcgann (Meriden) Executive Director, MeridenWallingford Substance Abuse Council As a Children's Champion, Marlene will: Invite others to become Friends, Support local initiatives, such as Meriden Children First, and Meriden School Readiness.
Maria Neubauer (Meriden) Director Head Teacher, KinderGarden Learning Center As a Children's Champion, Maria will: Invite friends and peers to become "Friends", Recruit new Friends through her organizational newsletter, Discuss Ready, Set, Grow as part of her regular conversations with elected officials.
David Radcliffe (Meriden) Facilitator, Meriden Children First Ready, Set, RECRUIT! Under the leadership of David Radcliffe, Meriden takes their goal of 757 Friends of Connecticut's Young Children very seriously and they're already more than 100 strong with Meriden's mayor, school superintendent, state representative, and elementary school principal among their many Friends! "We got to 43 friends with almost no effort," David Radcliffe, facilitator at Meriden Children First, modestly recounted in July. Since that time, Meriden has more than doubled their number of Friends. Their "efforts" include: Inviting Ready Rabbit to a "Back to School" event, yielding 107 Friends in just 2 hours! A recruitment message sent to their email list Coverage in the People's Press, a community "viewspaper" distributed to more than 20,000 people in Meriden and Wallingford Placement on the Meriden Chamber of Commerce's website with promised coverage in their newsletter. And, David says that he has "a handful of the RSG cards in my pocket that I give to people I see."