About 80 people gathered at Goshen College on June 9 for the latest Building Strong Brains convening, spending a morning together that covered a lot of ground and left the room with much to think about.
Coalition Director Lindsay Aguilar opened by grounding the work in something real. She asked the group to think about mothers in Elkhart County praying for healthy pregnancies, parents hoping their child walks into kindergarten ready to learn, and families searching for affordable, trusted child care. “You are the answer to someone else’s prayers,” she said, borrowing words from Dr. Carolyn Wu that she’d been carrying for years. It was a fitting frame for a morning full of examples of what happens when people and organizations work toward something bigger than any one of them.
The Elkhart County Health Department’s Healthy Babies program was the first to share. Aaron Hipsher and David Wiegner walked the group through the numbers and the people behind them. In 2025, Healthy Babies served 315 births and 422 enrollments. In the months since receiving grant support from the Community Foundation through the Lilly Endowment, the share of clients enrolled in their first trimester of pregnancy climbed from 51% to 71%. The program’s bilingual team of five works out of the WIC office on Hudson Street, meeting families where they are across prenatal care, Medicaid enrollment, safe sleep education, and connection to mental health and addiction services.
Dr. Kathy Guajardo brought the room to life, talking about Countdown to Kindergarten, a program launched on May 26 with the goal of reaching 500 children this summer who lack a preschool experience. What started last summer as a two-school pilot serving 57 children grew into something much more complex this year, requiring partners to solve for transportation, child care, food, health screenings, and special education services. Every one of those challenges found a solution through a partnership. Six school corporations are transporting children. The Boys and Girls Club is providing afternoon child care. Penn-Harris-Madison schools are crossing the county line to serve breakfast and lunch. Cultivate Food Rescue is handling snacks and weekend meals. A mobile medical unit from Maple City Health and CAPS is handling immunizations and physicals. The Elkhart County Special Education Cooperative is supporting children with IEPs. Dr. Kathy called it nine active partners, ten if you count the parents.
Shin Yi Tan led the group through a family voice session that asked hard questions about whose voices are actually centered in this work and what it would take to center them more fully. More on that in a separate post.
Action teams then offered brief updates: the Maternal and Child Health team is focused on safe sleep and tracking pediatric well-visit rates. Community Supports is finalizing a map of indoor play spaces by zip code and developing a trauma-informed community strategy. The Quality Early Learning Environments and Child Care team reported on its child care leadership council, which formed in January. The Data Support team shared that a second round of Visible Networks Lab surveys is being analyzed.
The convening closed with a partner spotlight, a new feature that will appear at each gathering. Nicole from the Elkhart Family Resource Center, operated by Geminus, introduced the center’s work in a stigma-free, walk-in space that offers everything from parenting education and story time to food, hygiene supplies, and connections to legal help and financial education. “Everything is free at our center,” she said simply.
Brian Replogle, assistant coalition director, closed by asking everyone to name one thing they would do in the next 30 days to advance the well-being of young children and their caregivers. It’s the kind of question this coalition takes seriously.
The next Building Strong Brains summit is set for Nov. 10 at Goshen College.