The University of Washington's College of Education has partnered with community to bring to life a vision for an early learning resource hub located at the Mt. Baker LINK station and serving the vibrant neighborhoods of the Rainier Valley. Since 2018, the College and our partners have dreamed a space shaped by community needs and community voice. We have worked together with partners from across the southeast Seattle area, the Mt. Baker neighborhood in particular, alongside educators and early learning professionals across our community.

Co-designed with Rainier Valley community members, the Rainier Valley Early Learning Campus (RVELC) addresses historical injustices in early learning by expanding access to affordable, high-quality childcare and preschool, centering anti-racist care and curricula, and providing tools, professional development and business supports to an industry led by practitioners of color. The RVELC will be a flagship workforce development and resource hub supporting early learning professionals locally and across the country.

Together, we envision a space that will serve families, educators, care providers, and aspiring educators from within our community.

The RVELC is built on years of organizing and designing together with community, and we commit to ongoing collaboration and shared leadership - please join us!

Fact Sheet

FAQs

Community Input Summary

As part of this process, we connected with community organizations, parents, care providers and leaders across our community to hear about existing challenges and opportunities for early learning and childcare in the Mt. Baker neighborhood. 

By February 2021, we had engaged with over two dozen organizations who serve the Mt. Baker and larger south Seattle communities:

• 129 family members of young children, community residents and organizational leaders
• 374 electronic surveys from South Seattle residents
• 34 South King County child-, family- and youth-serving organizations
• 42 UW faculty, staff and students
• 5 city and county offices
• 8 city, county and state elected officials

Vision

The RVELC is an innovative partnership of families, communities and the University centered around each child's right to nurturing, safe, healthy and enriching early learning experiences. Together, we will drive positive outcomes for children while expanding the science, art, practice and policy of early learning. We hold ourselves accountable to the communities most harmed by historical and ongoing oppression. The well-being, leadership, and wealth of Black and Indigenous communities is at the core of what we do. We center the ways race intersects with justice in LGBTQ, Disabled, Immigrant and multi-lingual communities. We honor each child’s healthy development and learning, each family’s well-being and each current and future practitioner’s professional growth. We re-imagine systems that give each and every child the strong start they deserve. Our success in this endeavor will be measured by the child and family outcomes we achieve together.

Values

• Nurturing wholeness and wellness
• Creating inclusive and equitable early learning communities
• Re-imagining partnerships
• Accelerating innovations and community leadership

Principles

To achieve this vision, our work will be guided by the following principles:

• Innovating with community: Community leadership is a core value, but we recognize that the needs and desires of different communities may, at times, come into conflict. We hold this tension and work together to center those communities most at risk of harm. Black and Indigenous leadership is central to this principle.
• Showing our work: We prioritize transparency. We use public media to show upcoming decisions, processes, and timelines.
• Listening and learning: We know that the UW is a large institution with a long history of community-engaged work — some successful, some not. We strive to learn, repair and build toward just relationships.
• Recognizing power: We acknowledge our power as an institution. We work intentionally to use our influence in ways that build trust and accountability.
• Building community power: With each decision, we ask ourselves, “How will this impact existing programs, particularly those led by Black, Indigenous and immigrant women?” We foster strong relationships with local early childhood providers, recognizing their knowledge and expertise as essential to achieving our shared vision of an early learning center that is built by, for, and with the communities it serves.