Most of what shapes a child’s learning happens long before a classroom. It happens at home, in the earliest years, through the people who are consistently there. This year’s Education is Power brought that idea into focus through research, conversation, and the voices of families who have lived it.
On May 13, staff, donors, community partners, and supporters filled a room at the Minneapolis Institute of Art for a live recording of the Mom Enough podcast and personal stories from Way to Grow families. One question kept coming up throughout the afternoon: what does it actually look like when people show up for each other?
Choosing Community in Difficult Times
CEO Coco Du opened the program by talking honestly about what the past year has looked like: families carrying real fear and uncertainty, staff continuing to do their jobs in the middle of it, and a community that refused to pull away.
This past winter, Way to Grow transformed its office into a supply center and delivered over 11 truckloads of donated essentials to all 830 families we serve. But the logistics weren’t what stayed with Coco, it was the way families looked out for one another. We saw this care when some families hesitated to take more than one bag of supplies because they wanted to make sure there was enough for other Way to Grow families too. We heard it in the messages parents sent afterward: “Thank you for not giving up on us.” “Thank you for encouraging my kids to read.”
“The most powerful thing we can offer our families is not perfection,” Coco told the room. “It is doing the right thing, even when everything else around us feels hard and nearly impossible.”
“When You Have People in Your Corner”
Nobody illustrated that better than Krystal Perry and her son Lelon. Krystal and her family have been part of Way to Grow for ten years. After Krystal experienced a miscarriage, her Family Educator Collette showed up in a way that went beyond the job. “She brought gift cards and said, ‘When you feel up to it, go get yourself some food. Try to eat.’ That’s not in the job description. That’s just somebody who cares.”
When Collette moved away, Krystal made a specific request for her next Family Educator: a Black male mentor for Lelon, who was getting older. She was a single mom and wanted her son to have someone who looked like him. Way to Grow listened and matched the family with Anthony “Tony” Allen.
Tony became part of their lives well beyond weekly visits. He connected them to activities and opportunities in the community and continued to work with Lelon even after his third grade graduation. He now works with Krystal’s younger daughter too. “I can call him any time,” Krystal said. “He’s like a big brother. We trust Tony.”
Over those same ten years, Krystal built her credit, moved into a home, and started working toward certification as a daycare aide. “When you have people in your corner who believe in you and want to see you succeed, it changes what feels possible.”
Then Lelon got up to speak. A fifth grader reading at an eighth-grade level, he stood at the podium by himself in front of a room full of adults he had never met. He spoke with the kind of courage most grown-ups would struggle to find, talking about his Way to Grow tutor, Amira, and the lesson she kept coming back to: “Take your time.” It is something he now carries through tests, hard moments, and making art. “Way to Grow gave me people who show up for me,” he said, “and I want to do the same for other people someday.”
You can learn more about Krystal and Lelon, and read their full words on our blog.
What Research Says
Krystal and Lelon told a story about consistent relationships and people who stayed present in their lives. Those are exactly the factors that early childhood research says matter most.
This year’s keynote was a live recording of Mom Enough®, the parenting podcast co-hosted by Dr. Marti Erickson and Dr. Erin Erickson, now in its 20th year. Coco joined them onstage to talk about early childhood development, what makes home visiting effective, and what “good enough” parenting actually looks like.
That last idea landed hard. For many parents in the room, it was reassuring to hear that children do not need perfection from the adults who care for them. What they need is consistency, trusted relationships, and someone willing to keep showing up.
The full Mom Enough® episode will be available soon. We will share more from that conversation, including the research and what it means for families.
What We Do Together Matters
Near the end of the program, Barry Rogers spoke about raising his son as a single dad. He talked about how encouragement, guidance, and steady presence shaped his family, not just in the early years, but across the course of his son’s whole life. And he reminded the room that making those relationships possible for other families takes a community willing to invest in them.
It was an afternoon where one person after another stood up and told a room full of people what it meant to not have to figure it out alone. Krystal put it simply: “I want to share Way to Grow with others because it’s such an important program for me and my children.”
If you would like to learn more, visit waytogrow.org. And if you would like to be part of what makes this possible for families like Krystal’s and Lelon’s, you can give at waytogrow.org/give.
