June 25, 2014
Fitchburg, MA. The Community Foundation of North Central Massachusetts has provided a grant to Children's Aid & Family Service, Inc., an affiliate of the Seven Hills Foundation, in the amount of $5,528 to help strengthen and improve the sustainability of the CAFS Child Enrichment Center.

These funds will be used to purchase new laptop computers for each of the six classrooms at the Child Enrichment Center in order to enhance each teacher's ability to assess and develop quality, appropriate curriculum plans for the 87 children supported. Since the tool is online, laptop computers are a necessity.

The Child Enrichment Center at Seven Hills has 40 years’ experience providing licensed, group-based child care to families in the North Central area of Massachusetts. The Center teachers use Teaching Strategies Gold, an online tool to assist them with evaluating each child's skills and development.

The tool also provides guidance on the appropriate curriculum for individual children and a group of children as a whole. These curriculum plans assist the teachers with enhancing children’s ability in needed areas. This program allows a child’s development to be tracked from year to year and gives indicators of any issues that may need further evaluation.

CAFS Child Enrichment Center teachers will conduct skill and development assessments for over 87 children from North Central Massachusetts through the Teaching Strategies Gold on-line evaluation tool, enabling them to identify needs and develop appropriate curriculum plans for each child.

In addition, CAFS Child Enrichment Center will enhance its capacity to provide its teachers access to up-to-date technology that will enable them to provide timely and efficient assessments and curriculum planning that enhance the effectiveness of the organization and the quality of services provided to the children we support.