Recently, the Michigan Early Childhood Investment Corporation (ECIC) received 12.5 million dollars in federal American Rescue Plan Act funding from the Michigan Department of Education. This fall, with this investment, the ECIC Child Care Innovation Fund has opened applications to communities across the state seeking funding for one of three child care innovation opportunities:
- Regional planning opportunities that will bring economic development and early childhood leaders together to accelerate community-level efforts to address Michigan’s child care crisis;
- Start-up and scale-up funding to support communities to launch, replicate, or sustain early care and education apprenticeship models to address child care workforce challenges; and
- Supply-building opportunities specifically for entrepreneurs that operate home-based child care programs to incubate and launch family child care networks.
These strategically designed opportunities will allow individual communities to focus on solutions that meet their unique needs to expand access, support the workforce and improve quality of care for the state’s youngest children.
