Program Overview

StoryMakers

Youth Leadership Programs

Strengthening the Circle

Native Science Field Centers

Native Science Fellows

Indigenous Scholars of Promise

Community Leadership Programs

Imagine Montana

The Together Campaign

StoryMakers

Hopa Mountain's StoryMakers program provides parents* of children ages 0–5 with high-quality books and early learning resources to support them as they read, sing, and talk positively with their children every day.

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.

When parents speak and read to babies, toddlers or preschoolers, they build a steady, loving relationship with their child and promote healthy brain development.

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, Hopa Mountain’s StoryMakers program offers:

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 W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust, the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, 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, Target and Hopa Mountain members.