Early childhood development nonprofit Brilliant Detroit set to expand nationally

Brilliant Detroit, the early childhood education nonprofit that serves children in underserved communities “from womb to age 8,” plans to expand its unique, neighborhood-based, holistic model to parts of the city beyond the Motor City.

Cindy Eggleton, CEO of Brilliant Detroit, told The Associated Press that her group will expand to three additional cities — Philadelphia, Chicago and Cleveland — starting next year and will change the group’s name to Brilliant Cities. The announcement is expected to be made Thursday night during the nonprofit’s annual benefit in Detroit.

“We currently have 31 cities in seven countries on a waiting list that we haven’t actually looked into,” said Eggleton, who co-founded the group in 2016. “We’re literally trying to figure out how to meet demand.”

Demand is growing as word spreads about Brilliant Detroit’s success. The group currently operates 24 community centers in Detroit that help underprivileged families prepare their children for kindergarten and ensure that children are reading at grade level for grades 1 through 3. Each center is located in a former abandoned home that has been renovated and staffed with teachers and volunteers who support the children’s educational, health and social needs, as well as the child’s family. Brilliant Detroit says it now serves about 24,000 people at its centers across the city, and that recent studies show that children in the program have improved three reading levels, with 92 percent maintaining their progress over the summer break.

Eggleton attributes that progress to the community support that all of Brilliant Detroit’s hubs enjoy and the group’s efforts to maintain that support.

“There’s a way to show up in a community that shows you’re listening,” Eggleton said, adding that Brilliant Detroit only expands to neighborhoods where it’s invited. “And we recruit from the neighborhood — 33 percent of our people on the floor come from the neighborhoods where we operate.”

The combination has generated a lot of attention and support for Brilliant Detroit, whose work has been honored by Elevate Prize Foundation last year and the AARP Purpose Prize in 2021.

Vance Lewis, associate partner at the nonprofit Promise Venture Studio, a nonprofit focused on promoting and developing innovations in early childhood development, said Brilliant Detroit is successful because it is “community-led and driven.”

“It works because it’s not fragmented, and in many ways, a lot of early childhood programs can feel that way,” said Lewis, whose California-based group offered Eggleton a fellowship in 2020. “You can come to a Brilliant hub and you get coordinated, high-quality programming from pregnancy through grade 3 reading level.”

At a time when major donors are scaling back their support for education programs, Lewis said donors should look to smaller, successful models like Brilliant Cities to still make an impact.

“We know that early childhood development still doesn’t have the public investment that it needs and should have,” he said. “I would say a model like this is a way for funders to get back in.”

Brilliant Cities chose Philadelphia as its first expansion city because the City of Brotherly Love communities organized and showed they were eager to welcome the program, Eggleton said.

“Philly is different than Detroit,” she said. “What’s not different is a desire for more connection… I would almost say there’s a hunger for this idea of ​​place, of families being at the center of the work.”

Brilliant Cities also wants to expand by offering the knowledge it has gained about mobilizing neighborhoods free of charge to other organizations.

“It can be used for efforts outside of things like early childhood and families,” she said. “We’ve been asked, ‘How would you do this for seniors? How would you do this in the medical field?’ And the answer is we’re going to teach people how to do it and they can do it themselves.”

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