Better Way Foundation welcomes one of its newest partners – Tohono O’odham Community College (TOCC) in the Sonoran Desert near Sells, Arizona. TOCC is an accredited land grant institution. While primarily serving residents of the Tohono O’odham Nation, the College is open to anyone seeking secondary education. TOCC is a growing, two-year institution with enrollment of over 850 students representing 52 Native nations.

The Early Childhood Education program at the TOCC has seen tremendous growth in the past five years. The community of practice, called A’al Ha-Mascam (children and their learning), supports students and educators towards degree completion, coaching in teacher’s classrooms, and professional development opportunities throughout the year.

Better Way Foundation is providing support to TOCC to plan and host an inaugural O’odham and Pee Posh Early Childhood symposium to help set early childhood education initiatives in motion. The overall vision for the project is to strengthen early childhood systems within and across the four O’odham and Pee Posh tribes of the Ak-Chin Indian Community, the Gila River Indian Community, the Salt River Indian Community, and the Tohono O’odham Nation. It will also be an opportunity for O’odham and Pee Posh ECE students to develop their research skills and present and on their activities to form a new cohort of Indigenous scholars and educators.

We applaud Tohono O’odham Community College’s commitment to initiate open dialog and implement programming that reflects the O’odham and Pee Posh languages, cultures, and pedagogies of childhood and learning.