Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Born Learning campaign?

Born Learning is a national public engagement campaign helping parents, caregivers and communities create early learning opportunities for young children.  It’s built on awareness, education and action.

• Public service advertising, a Web site and educational material give parents, grandparents and other caregivers easy, “doable” action steps to help young children learn. 
• Community action tools help Born Learning campaigns use this visibility to galvanize communities around early learning.  This could be to change or support policy, programs or funding for young children.

Who are the campaign’s targets?

The public engagement campaign targets adults who impact young children.  The educational material and PSAs target parents and family/friend caregivers – the most important influences on a child in the earliest years.  Born Learning’s community engagement toolkit helps communities make long-lasting change that supports young children.

What’s in the educational material?

Born Learning’s educational material draws from cutting-edge research on early childhood development, transforming it into content into bilingual educational tools for parents and caregivers.  Materials include a wide variety of user-friendly tools, tips and answers to help care for young children, fact sheets on a child’s ages and stages, brochures on how to maximize play, at-a-glance cards that you can throw in a diaper bag, and checklists for everyday use.  Virtually all of the material is also available in Spanish.

Who’s behind it? 

Born Learning is the result of many collaborations and partnerships, at the local, state and national level. National campaign partners since the beginning of Born Learning include United Way of America, United Way Success By 6, Civitas, Families and Work Institute and the Ad Council. And more and more national organizations focused on early learning are joining the effort too, including the Association of Children’s Museums and the Birth to Five Policy Alliance.

For more information about our partners, please click here. 

Why all this focus on early learning? 

Experts know that investing in a child’s success early on is critical.  Research shows the tangible results – adults with greater success in life, fewer involvements in crime, higher incomes and higher education levels.

Yet almost half of America’s kindergarteners come to school behind, according to the U.S. Department of Education.  The poorest kids are already more than a year behind.   But most of the investment in children happens in the school years, not in those critical early years.  As Dr. Jack Shonkoff of the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child puts it, there is a big gap between what we know – and what we do – to promote healthy childhood development.

This campaign seeks to bridge the gap – at a national level.  It puts easy-to-use early learning tools in parents’ hands, and helps them understand what to do to prepare their children for school.

United Ways are already part of the solution at the community level.  Almost 75% of the 1,300 local United Ways support early childhood in some form, either by funding early childhood programs or agencies or through community impact initiatives like Success By 6.  But the Born Learning campaign takes United Way’s commitment to early learning to a national level.   

How can ads make a difference?

Public service advertising has inspired significant social change by influencing both public opinion and public policy, according to research conducted by The Ad Council.  Its research shows that public service announcements are an effective means of communication and education,  increasing awareness, reinforcing positive beliefs, intensifying personal concern and moving people to action.  

One example is the Ad Council’s PSA campaign on drunk driving, which started in 1983.  Since then, traffic deaths due to alcohol-related crashes have dropped almost 15%, some 90% of all Americans are aware of the issue today (65% report they’ve tried to stop someone from driving after drinking) and the term “designated driver” is now part of the American vocabulary.  

Born Learning is about more than advertising because successful campaigns always are.  Through the reach of the United Way system, thousands of community leaders are engaged in this effort.  They’re getting the word out to parents, linking parents and caregivers with resources, and galvanizing communities to do more in support of early learning.

How can parents get more information?

Parents can get more information from this campaign Web site, www.bornlearning.org, where a wide array of tips, tools and information is available.  Parents can also use the Web site to find a local Born Learning campaign near them. Educational materials are being distributed by local United Ways and early childhood organizations across the country, often in partnership with hospitals, pediatricians, parent educators and human service agencies.

Where can I see the ads or get the material?

You can view the ads at www.bornlearning.org, and you can download helpful early learning tools from the Web site as well.  If you want copies of the ad to run as public service announcements, contact Penny Schildkraut at the Ad Council at pschildkraut@adcouncil.org or (212) 984-1928.

What kind of community impact activities will take place under Born Learning?

Born Learning is strengthening community support of early learning in many ways.  Hundreds of communities and many states are embracing Born Learning as part of their lasting community change efforts.  Born Learning providesa visible platform for public policy and action.  It’s putting research-driven products – along with tools and templates for education and outreach – into communities through a national grassroots network that’s creating innovative ideas to help local children.  And it’s supporting a mobilization effort that helps any community’s early learning efforts, providing tools, templates and training, along with more intensive national support for targeted communities or states.