New Fund Launched By The United Way

The United Way’s Success By 6 Impact Council has launched the Natalie Pugh Memorial Professional Development Fund. This new fund, named in honor of a dedicated early childhood education advocate and United Way volunteer, will offer financial support to early childhood educators who wish to pursue opportunities being offered by Success By 6 to enhance their knowledge, skills, and practice.

Natalie Pugh was a co-chair of the Success By 6 Impact Council and was integral in the development of the impact council structure and reorganizing the long-standing Success By 6 committee into a council. A strong community advocate for early childhood education, she devoted her career to promoting high-quality care in the Wabash Valley both in volunteer roles and with her job at Chances and Services for Youth. Education was always an important element that Natalie encouraged for early childhood educators. Natalie passed away in October of 2021, and this lead the Success By 6 Council to focus their educational investments through a fund dedicated in Natalie’s honor.

The Success By 6 Council focuses on promoting healthy early childhood development to ensure children enter school ready to succeed. The Council believes that to develop an ecosystem of high-quality early childhood education in the Wabash Valley, we must invest in the education and professional development of our teachers and caregivers. This fund will allow the Success By 6 Council to invest in programs and initiatives that lift up our local educators and childcare professionals to provide them more opportunities to be best prepared to care for our future generations.

For the full article, see this week’s edition of the Parke County Sentinel.