| Notes |
The project began when co-director Greg Jacobs, of Siskel/Jacobs Productions in Chicago, was working on a video for the Ounce of Prevention Fund and spent a week at Educare Chicago, a model early-childhood program for children from birth to age 5 that has inspired more sites across the country. The author of a book on school desegregation in Columbus Public Schools in Ohio, Jacobs was interested in education policy, but was unfamiliar with issues related to young children.
“[Early-childhood education] had never entered the picture,” he said in an interview. “We became zealous converts in the span of a week.” Joining with Kindling Group, also a Chicago-based documentary film company, the project attracted funding from a wide range of foundations that have focused on early-childhood issues in recent years, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Bezos Family Foundation in Washington, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation in Michigan and the David and Lucille Packard Foundation in California. |