Two groups, two missions

Building Bright Futures focuses on children in poverty, from birth through high school graduation. Key initiatives over the next year to 18 months:

Early childhood: Provide training and funding to child care centers that serve the highest number of extremely low-income children. Centers must agree to outside review and to work toward meeting standards. Goal: Reach 1,000, or about 10 percent, of the children in Douglas and Sarpy Counties who are not being served with high-quality early childhood care.

Health care: Establish by the end of the school year health clinics in six OPS schools: Franklin, Indian Hill, Kellom and Kennedy Elementary Schools, Spring Lake Magnet Center and Blackburn Alternative High School. Goal: Serve more than 3,500 students, or about 4 percent of those without regular medical care.

Attendance: Start programs at 15 schools in three districts (OPS, Millard, Ralston) to reward students for near-perfect attendance. Goal: provide incentives for 5,700 students.

Mentoring: Formalize the Midlands Mentoring Partnership. An executive director and board will link students across the metro area to mentors in existing programs, recruit more mentors and establish standards for mentoring. Goal: find more diverse mentors and link as many as 3,000 more students to a mentor.

The Bright Futures Foundation focuses on low-income children from high school through postsecondary education and into the workforce. The group started its Avenue Scholars program during the summer. So far:

Participants: 167 students who attend Metro Community College or Omaha Benson, Omaha Northwest or Ralston High Schools.

Programming: Each student is paired with a “talent adviser.” The adviser teaches a daily class with the scholars on everything from securing scholarships to ACT test preparation. Students also receive personal counseling; post-secondary students each receive a laptop computer.

Next up: Students at three more high schools will be identified for the program this spring.