Ann O'Leary reflects on Next Generation's accomplishments and discusses what's next for the Children & Families program.

As we’ve worked with our partners to fine tune our community campaign in Tulsa, Oklahoma and in Oakland, we’ve learned valuable lessons about how to best reach parents and cargegivers to encourage them to talk, read, sing and bond as much as possible with their children starting at birth.

When I look back on this year, I am blown away. Kate Gordon called it, “The year of climate action.” In many ways it’s also been a year for kids and families.

The commitment, unveiled in conjunction with today’s White House Early Learning Summit, builds on “Pequeños y Valiosos” (Young and Valuable), the joint campaign launched by Univision and Too Small to Fail in February 2014 that has since reached millions of Hispanic families with messages, tools and resources.

Halloween is a special holiday for children – it’s one of the few times a year when the entire country actively encourages kids and adults to engage their creative sides, build outrageous/brilliant/hilarious costumes, place decorative gourds on our front porches, and eat too much candy.

A triple play is an uncommon event in the sport of baseball – a subject fresh on my mind thanks to our San Francisco Giants’ winning the NLCS pennant this week. Only 696 triple plays have ever occurred in the entire professional history of the sport. This week, however, our Too Small To Fail Initiative pulled off the rare act with three successful high profile events on two coasts.

Too Small to Fail joins the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Urban Institute, U.S. Department of Education, and Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to highlight the ways that communities across the country are tackling this serious but solvable challenge.

Following her keynote address at Dreamforce 2014 tomorrow, Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will join Salesforce Chairman and CEO Marc Benioff, Bay Area business and community leaders, and Dreamforce volunteers to kick off a day-long effort to fill thousands of tote bags with materials designed to encourage Oakland parents and caregivers to talk, read and sing to their children fro

New data on poverty was recently released from the Census Bureau’s annual American Community Survey. The data compiled are a vital tool to tell us how well we’re fighting poverty over time – and the news is good.

The collaboration aims to combat a serious challenge in early learning—specifically, narrowing the “word gap.” Content will be produced by some of MiTu’s hottest Latino talent, all of whom consistently attract sizeable audiences and engage on various social media networks. Talent will encourage parents and caregivers to take simple actions during their children’s first five years of life.

Just as children’s minds are formed by what they read, so too is our national narrative formed by how our media frame and report the news. So reading really is fundamental - both to our kids, and to the health of our planet.

As you might expect, here at Next Generation we spend a lot of time talking and writing about the next generation of Americans – what they need to thrive and how to make the best world for them to do it in. This week, however, we featured a blog post by a member of that new generation.

When I came to Next Generation a year ago, I was excited by its unique niche: policy thinking and communications on issues that affect California’s children and families. This was a place that understood that issues affecting parents and children are inextricably linked, and that smart policy-making can’t be successful without the ability to make it heard and understood.

On July 23, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton joined business, hospital, and community leaders in Oakland to announce the launch of “Talking is Teaching: Talk, Read, Sing,” a multi-media community campaign that will help local parents, grandparents, and caregivers improve their babies’ ability to build vocabulary and set them up for brighter futures.

A little over one year ago, Jim Steyer, Ann O’Leary, and I were in Chicago signing a memorandum of understanding with the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation that joined us together as partners on our Too Small to Fail initiative. At the time we had grand plans; We knew the first issue we wanted to take on, the “word gap,” and we had lots of ideas ...

Local business and community leaders, including the Bay Area Council, UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland and Kaiser Permanente, today announced a campaign to better prepare Oakland’s children for success in school and beyond. ‘Talking is Teaching: Talk Read Sing’, aims to close the “word gap“—a difference in the number of words children in high- and low-income families hear.

We had a remarkable week at our “Little Nonprofit That Can” – one that would be remarkable for any nonprofit, but was all the more amazing to me, having spent about a quarter of a century in the field, for an organization that is less than four years old.

In celebration of its one-year-anniversary, and in collaboration with the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy along with other bipartisan leaders, Too Small to Fail shared video messages from President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Cindy McCain and Senator Bill Frist.

Distraction, spin, and information overload – these are just a few of the problems we face when we attempt to sort out the right information we need for our kids and our climate.

Ann O'Leary's speech at the Child Care Aware of America Symposium on the word gap and the importance of talking, reading and singing with babies and toddlers to build their brains and prepare them for later learning and good health outcomes.

Multi-Media Campaign Will Empower Parents and Family Members of Young Children to Realize Their Potential as Their Children’s First Teachers by Offering Tools and Tips to Boost Vocabulary and Early Learning

Our Too Small to Fail team passed a major milestone this week with the news that we've garnered over 100,000 likes on Facebook. To celebrate, we're running a giveaway on the Facebook page and soliciting fan photos on with a contest on Twitter and Instagram. And of course we're still providing high-quality, science-based information on early childhood development to parents and caregivers on toosma

Good news everyone! Well, kind of … Kate Gordon, Vice President and Director of Energy and Climate, actually reported on some pretty terrible news in this week’s California Energy and Climate News. In a recent Gallup poll only 24 percent of Americans worry more about climate change than say, the economy, unemployment, or crime. As Kate artfully points out, however ...

Last week, educators sat together at Santa Cruz county’s fifth annual “Together for Kindergarten” meeting, including family child care providers, center-based providers, as well as kindergarten teachers and administrators, to improve the transition between preschool and kindergarten for children and families.

All of us struggle to make sense of the world. Sometimes it seems like the needle of insight is buried deep within the haystack of muddle and distraction — and who has time to figure it all out?

Univision Communications Inc. will hold an education fair in Austin, Texas in order to distribute several thousand books to local children and families.

"When a dog bites a man, that is not news … but if a man bites a dog that is news.” That saying has been attributed to multiple newspapermen – and for the most part is true. Two “Man Bites Dog” stories jumped out at me recently, one which has gotten lots of play, one that deserves to get more.

Children who don't hear enough words from birth through their toddler years are unprepared to begin school, and don’t have the vocabulary or cognitive skills that will help them succeed in life. That's why our Too Small to Fail initiative has partnered with Univision to give Hispanic parents and caregivers the information they need to help close the word gap.

The new initiative, “Pequeños y Valiosos,” will help Hispanic parents and caregivers get information about early brain development, early learning, and efforts and strategies to close the word gap.

The likelihood of a child's succeeding in school, leading a healthy life and productively contributing to the economic engine of California is largely set before the child ever crosses the threshold to kindergarten. Sadly, childhood poverty is the No. 1 predictor for educational success and health outcomes.

“Pequeños y Valiosos” will direct its efforts at Hispanic parents and other caregivers of children ages zero to five, encouraging them to talk, read, and sing with their children in order to develop their language and vocabulary skills.

There are moments, in building anything, when it can be difficult to see the final product. They are common moments in any large undertaking, and surely there have been a few at Next Generation over the past months as we've laid the foundations for our most ambitious projects. This week, however, is not one of those times.

Through my work with Too Small to Fail, I’ve learned a lot about how small actions on the part of parents and caregivers – reading, talking, and playing with babies and young children every day – can have a substantial impact on early development and school readiness. This holiday break, I set out to practice these ideas with the childre

Simple activities such as singing, dancing, and making music together can improve a child’s memory and learning.

At Next Generation, we know that the challenges we face are daunting. America’s lack of investment in our most vulnerable children and our inability to take on climate change threaten the economy and stability of the world we will leave to future generations. But we’re also optimistic that, through smart projects, good partners, and great staff, we can make a difference.

America's kids are falling behind. We're hopeful that through efforts like Too Small to Fail, we'll be able to close the gap – but we're not sanguine about what it will take. When you add up the numbers, it's clear that we'll all need to be a part of the solution.

The Senate HELP Committee introduced the Strong Start for America's Children Act

Too Small to Fail is partnering up with amazing parent-bloggers at Go Mighty, an online network of goal sharing, support and achievement.

Childhood instability can be damaging to a child's early development. Read this factsheet for tips on how parents can ameliorate the impact.

New research has come out on the word gap, an issue Too Small to Fail is working to address. And it looks like climate-savvy Californians are learning how to have their cars and drive them, too (with less fuel). Apparently, "mind the gap" is not just for folks who ride the train.

In today's New York Times, we learned about new research by Stanford Psychology Professor Anne Fernald and her colleagues that adds powerful evidence to the theory that children's learning starts very early. Professor Fernald’s research shows that by the time children are two years old, there is already a gap in language proficiency of six months between higher- and lower-income children.

A child's first relationships serve as a reference point for all future relationships, and also influence problem-solving abilities, peer relationships and basic coping skills.

The report is an important step in realizing the initiative’s goal to help parents, caregivers, communities and businesses take meaningful, evidence-based actions that will improve the health and well-being of America’s youngest children, ages zero to five, and prepare them to succeed in the 21st century.

Children learn words that they hear words spoken directly to them, and if they hear too few words and have too few conversational interactions while they are learning to speak, their vocabularies suffer.

National early childhood development experts, business leaders, community advocates and political leaders join Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and longtime child advocate James Steyer today for the inaugural meeting of the Too Small to Fail Advisory and Leadership Councils.

By working together to find simple solutions for healthier living and eating, communities can improve health outcomes for children and raise the quality of life for all.

For very young children preparing for school means developing important social and emotional skills, as well as cognitive skills that will help them get ready to learn when they begin kindergarten.

The average working parent only gets to spend 16 hours a week with their kids.

An update from the Too Small to Fail Initiative on the huge pay-offs of early learning.

News that matters to the Next Generation.

The Annie E. Casey Foundation's annual report on child well-being is more evidence that we need a national focus on early education—not only in the public sphere, but also in the private sector, and in our personal lives.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation are partnering with Next Generation on the “Too Small To Fail" Children's Initiative.

Next Generation’s Children & Families program partners with former Secretary of State and the Clinton Foundation to focus on improving outcomes for children ages zero to five.

We've spent a lot of time worrying about institutions deemed "Too Big to Fail," but now it's time to focus on those who are Too Small to Fail- America's kids.

New video from Too Small to Fail: the story of one family, trapped in the collapse of the middle class.

Alfa's an "A" student in an "F" zip code. It's students like her that need and deserve our investment.

El programa de Niños y Familias de Next Generation lanza con la fundación Clinton para mejorar la vida de los recién nacidos hasta los 5 años.