Program Overview

StoryMakers

Youth Leadership Programs

Youth Leaders in Service

Strengthening the Circle

Native Science Field Centers

Native Science Fellows

Nonprofit Leadership Programs

Imagine Montana

StoryMakers

Hopa Mountain's StoryMakers program is an early learning initiative that offers parents* of children ages 0–5 proven tools to support them in creating a home environment that gives their children the best chances for success in school.

A growing body of research confirms that a strong early-learning home environment predicts children’s success in school. Success in school strongly predicts health and economic self-sufficiency in adulthood.

Fundamental principles of human learning underlie the links between very early home environments and later success in school and in life. For example, we know that children’s early experiences in their homes significantly influence their developing brain structures and functions, and thus, their ability to learn.

And in healthy home environments, early-learned skills and competencies, particularly relating to language, build upon and reinforce one another, leading to a spiral of broader and stronger skills and competencies – and greater chances for future success.

Through community teams of citizen leaders, the StoryMakers program offers:

• high-quality, age- and culturally-appropriate, children’s books as tools to enhance children’s social, emotional and cognitive development
• current parent-friendly child development information and book-sharing ideas
• personal encouragement to shape home life for children’s success with relationships and learning

* In all StoryMakers materials, “parent” means a child’s primary caregiver.

This program is made possible through generous support from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, Women’s Opportunity and Resource Development (WORD) through the Montana Parent Information and Resource Center funded by the U.S. Department of Education, the Steele-Reese Foundation, the Dennis and Phyllis Washington Foundation, the O.P. and W.E. Edwards Foundation, the Montana Office of Public Instruction, the Walter L. and Lucille Braun Family Charitable Gift Fund, and Hopa Mountain members.