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News of Orange <br />FSA makes movement in the <br />county <br />Posted on Aug 13, 2015 <br />by Amanda VanDerBroek <br />After just a year in existence, the Family Success Alliance is putting down roots in Orange County. <br />Last August, FSA started to link existing resources together to combat poverty and create a pipeline of <br />success for children and families. <br />“We’ve done a lot,” Meredith Stewart, program manager, said. “We started a year ago in August with <br />forming our advisory council, which is made up of a number of nonprofits, local government officials, <br />we’ve now included parent representatives as of this coming month.” <br />In December 2014, two zones in the county were selected to pilot FSA—Zone 4, an area located between <br />Interstates 40 and 85 in central Orange County that includes A.L. Stanback Middle School and New Hope <br />Elementary, and Zone 6, a densely populated area that encompasses downtown Chapel Hill and <br />Carrboro southwest of N.C. 54. <br />“We based that look of what it should be on national models like the Harlem Children’s Zone and the <br />other Promise neighborhoods around the country,” Stewart said. “That led to some community priorities <br />around children being ready for kindergarten, around affordable, accessible childcare, around <br />transportation, housing. <br />“And so from that we did two things with some funding we had available from the Social Justice fund at <br />the end of the year. The first was to hire our zone navigators from each zone so we have two part -time <br />navigators in each zone, and the other was to pilot a kindergarten readiness program in three schools— <br />two schools in Zone 6 and one school in Zone 4.” <br />Beginning in July and August, kindergarten readiness works to help 70 children—including some at New <br />Hope Elementary—to prepare for the big leap into school. Stewart said the program helps the kids <br />academically and socially. <br />“The kindergarten readiness program is aimed both at kind of the academic side that we think about —like <br />at New Hope—learning numbers, learning letters and colors, those kind of things but also at the transition <br />and the routine that happens from going to a home that you’ve been used to to a kindergarten setting <br />where you’re meeting new children, you’re learning new routines, you’re going to lunch —all of those