Help Me Grow Ottawa is an organization that helps parents find preschool programs, a partner of Thrive Ottawa (discussed in a recent article), and a community stakeholder. Here are the organizations listed on the Help Me Grow Ottawa page as partners.
According to the website,
Help Me Grow connects families with children birth through age five to free local resources helping children grow up healthy and ready to succeed in school.
Help Me Grow Ottawa is funded through the Great Start Collaborative from the Michigan Department of Education Office of Great Start and in-kind support from our local partners.
Great Start Collaborative-Ottawa Area, connects parents, social service agencies, individuals, health care professionals, childcare providers, educators and more with unique community initiatives.
To help parents find pre-school options and other free resources based on their needs, Help Me Grow Ottawa invites them to create an online account in the Michigan Early Childhood Connect system (MiECC), a data collection tool. Some pre-school programs address disabilities, “at risk”, and income challenges, so parents must complete an online questionnaire that asks for personal information and is equipped to receive documents such as income statements, personal tax records, birth records, and medical records.
The Help Me Grow Ottawa office is located in the Ottawa Area Intermediate School District (OAISD) main office building. The OAISD developed the MiECC data collection tool, which was originally called Early Childhood Data System (ECDS). The MiECC data collection tool was so successful that it has been implemented throughout much of Michigan.
According to a presentation given at the OAISD board meeting on March 15, 2023, by Tami Mannes and Maureen Schmidt, they estimate they have personal data for 210,609 children which amounts to approximately 31% of Michigan children. According to Mannes, “we have more than school data.” The personal data gathered from the questionnaires is used to help obtain grants and funding for community partners, housing supports, school districts, and kindergarten readiness camps.
According to the OAISD board meeting presentation, MiECC is currently owned by the Michigan Association of Intermediate School Administrations (MAISA) and time spent working on the system is billed to the MAISA. Design work is funded from a community foundation on the other side of the state and local creators of MiECC are currently exploring options to expand funding. For example, MiECC is expanding into an additional location in Michigan’s upper peninsula and Wayne County, which are expected to launch in December 2023.
A parent organization to MiECC, that works to collect data on Michigan citizens through other avenues, is known as the Michigan Collaboration Hub (MiCH). MiECC is solely one data collection tool under the Michigan Collaboration Hub (MiCH) suite of programs.
The data of citizens is extremely valuable. It is commonly used by community partners as justification for funding, and for the implementation of programs intended to benefit community residents. Some areas of the world use data to control behavior through the use of social credit systems. Whoever owns the data can sell the data to organizations that wish to propose projects to nonprofit community foundations, government departments and other funding groups.
In summary, Help Me Grow Ottawa is a community partner of Thrive Ottawa. Thrive Ottawa is a collaboration of non-profits created by Community Spoke which in turn is funded by Ottawa County and run by Lynne Doyle of Community Mental Health Ottawa County (CMHOC) and Patrick Cisler, former Executive Director of Community Spoke. Help Me Grow Ottawa collects data on preschool aged children and families. Data is collected through the MiECC data collection tool, and the MiECC data collection tool is one small part of the Michigan Collaboration Hub.
Are these government entities and participating organizations really benefitting the public or are they taking advantage of public funding? Are you comfortable with all of the data collection?