FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: September 16, 2024
communications@irco.org
Jenny Bremner, 971-336-3199
Portland, OR—The Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization (IRCO) is excited to announce that the groundbreaking of IRCO’s Early Beginnings – Glisan Landing will take place on September 17, 2024, at noon. The preschool will be one of its kind on site at IRCO’s first housing development site in NE Portland’s Montavilla neighborhood. This location is ideal for IRCO’s first co-located preschool, with many of IRCO clients’ small businesses in the area as well as Vestal Elementary right around the corner where IRCO operates a SUN community school.
IRCO Early Beginnings – Glisan Landing, will help 40 3–5-year-old immigrant and refugee children become ready for kindergarten with developmentally appropriate and culturally specific books, toys, curriculum, and materials and no cost tuition. The school will also offer a unique opportunity for job seekers pursuing careers in the childcare field to participate in active learning in the classroom to support the classes they are taking through IRCO’s workforce program. This project was initiated after IRCO spearheaded a culturally specific community-driven needs assessment for 90 families from nine broadly defined cultural groups to express the need for early learning for their children. Immigrant and refugee families clearly voiced a need for a culturally specific preschool staffed and organized by communities representing the families they serve and honoring and incorporating their communities’ languages, life experiences, religious beliefs, and cultural and traditional values. In response to these needs, IRCO piloted its first multicultural preschool in Washington County through Preschool Promise funding in March 2020.
IRCO is excited to expand with our state-of-the-art learning center, multicultural curriculum and staff, free early learning tuition for 40 families annually, proximity to new-construction affordable housing and culturally specific wraparound services for families. To learn more about this exciting development, check out https://irco.org/services/early-learning/.