1. ECO Early Childhood Family Education Coordinated Outreach Early Childhood Family Education “Building Blocks for Family and School Success”

2. ECO Overview ECO is made up of participating school districts that collaborate to promote Early Childhood Family Education statewide through the development of unified marketing materials and resources. ECO distributes over 20,000 ECFE tri-fold brochures printed in English, Hmong, Somali and Spanish annually. Members have links on the ECO website www.ecfe.info to their individual district websites. Annual ECO membership fee is a cost effective application of ECFE outreach funds.

3. ECO Marketing Benefits Take advantage of great pricing on updated, proven marketing materials. Visit www.ecfe-orders.info to order free or low cost items. ECO members bring marketing samples/ideas to monthly meetings to share with members in attendance or in the Members section of www.ecfe.info Monthly birth lists, provided by the MN Department of Health, of babies born in the zip codes you provide. You can follow up and make contact with the families.

4. ECO websites www.ecfe.info Designed for families to find out what ECFE is all about. Locate an ECFE program in Minnesota. Designed for professionals to keep current on the newest early childhood ideas. Member sharing corner of promotional ideas, early childhood or parent education ideas. www.ecfe-orders.info Purchase your membership online. Credit cards and purchase orders accepted. Include the zip codes you’d like to receive birth info for. Order free or low cost marketing materials to promote ECFE. Personalize the materials with your local ECFE info.

5. Minnesota College Savings Plan ECO partners with Minnesota College Savings Plan. Combined initiatives include: Parenting Tips A-Z printed at no cost courtesy of MN College Savings Plan. Shipping/handling fees apply. Appearance at the Minnesota State Fair and other events to hand out ECFE info. Working with ECFE Parent Educator and MN Teacher of the Year Katy Smith to produce a short DVD for parents attending Early Childhood Screening.

6. Why attend a meeting? To learn from each other! Members include educators, marketing, or communications staff who provide input and discussion at monthly meetings. To obtain new marketing ideas and materials. To establish and reinforce a networking circle. To learn about issues facing ECFE. Hear about strategies other districts are implementing. To have fun!

7. What if I can’t attend? Send ideas you’d like to share with other ECO members (in pdf format) for posting on the ECO website to: caryl_willey@rdale.orgcaryl_willey@rdale.org Keep informed by reading the meeting minutes.

8. Brainstorming What ideas do you have that would make your ECFE Coordinated Outreach-ECO membership more viable? What marketing materials would you like to see? Other comments? Suggestions? Contact ECO Membership Margi Couillard at margi.couillard@moundsviewschools.org with your responses. margi.couillard@moundsviewschools.org

9. Join ECO now! Can we count on YOUR ECFE program becoming an ECO member this year? It’s simple! To join, just go to www.ecfe-orders.info. www.ecfe-orders.info We would love to have ALL of the ECFE programs in Minnesota become ECO members. TOGETHER we can do much more to promote the importance of quality parent-child education in ECFE!!