Clinton Hill Early Learning Center Receives 2023 Smart Growth Award from New Jersey Future
Lead developer, sole funder Maher Charitable Foundation awarded for its $17 million early childhood education center in South Ward, Newark neighborhood
Florham Park, NJ – Sept. 26, 2023 – The Maher Charitable Foundation will receive a 2023 Smart Growth Award from New Jersey Future on October 3 for funding and leading the design and construction of the state-of-the-art $17 million Clinton Hill Early Learning Center in Newark’s South Ward. The award honors the best development projects across the state with the “environment and communities in mind.” The Center is located on a site that had been designated to be a high school, but which had been vacant for two decades. Forty-eight infants and toddlers and 150 three- and four-year-olds receive high-quality early education at the Center, helping prepare them to succeed in school.
Brian Maher, Maher Charitable Foundation founder and chairman, and former chief executive officer of Maher Terminals in the Port of New York and New Jersey, created Maher Charitable Foundation to address his long-held belief that education is one of the most effective tools society has for empowering individuals, overcoming inequity and realizing social progress. He has focused the Foundation’s investments on efforts to expand and improve childcare and early childhood learning in New Jersey. The Center’s design and construction exemplify the core principles and values that have guided the philanthropic approach of the Maher Charitable Foundation since its start in 2009: input from local residents and partnership with long-standing community advocates.
“The Clinton Hill Early Learning Center reaffirms the Foundation’s fundamental belief that all children deserve early care and education in a high-quality, beautiful setting, close to their homes, where they can be nurtured and grow into successful learners from their earliest educational experiences,” says Mr. Maher.
In addition to the Center’s multi-purpose room, which is open to the community, the site also includes a family childcare hub, where home-based childcare providers in the community can connect with resources and opportunities. In the short time since its March 2022 opening, the Center has become a meeting place for parents, citizen groups, seniors, youth development programs and a host of other community-driven activities that have set the neighborhood’s revitalization in motion and helped foster stronger community ties.
The Maher Charitable Foundation worked closely with established early childhood providers in the neighborhood. The resulting building, and the program operating within it, prove that culturally appropriate education environments can be created that motivate children to become active learners, assess and address special needs and engage parents in their children’s learning. The Maher Charitable Foundation supports the idea that high quality early learning spaces are the child’s third teacher – after their parents, and the teachers in the program.
“This award, and the building it acknowledges, is a signal to the rest of the state that beautiful, carefully planned redevelopment of disinvested spaces can serve as the catalyst for revitalization across New Jersey. Children, families, and early childhood educators thrive in paces designed with their input and with the community in mind,” says Mr. Maher.
Project partners:
The City of Newark, which supported sale of the property and its redevelopment.
Clinton Hill Community Action, the fast-growing community development corporation in the South Ward focused on community-led revitalization that manages the Center.
Two high-quality early childhood education providers – Clinton Hill Community & Early Childhood Center, Inc. and La Casa de Don Pedro – who have formed a new partnership to create a seamless zero-5 educational opportunity for neighborhood children eligible for Early Head Start and New Jersey’s high quality PreK.
DIGroup Architecture, the award-winning designers of the building.
Donnelly Construction, project managers who led the construction on time and on budget during the pandemic, and Dresdner Robbin, the project’s engineers.
Images and video footage can be found here.
About Maher Charitable Foundation
Brian Maher, the founder and principal of the Maher Charitable Foundation, was the chief executive officer of Maher Terminals, a container terminal in the Port of New York and New Jersey. When the company sold in 2007, Brian and his family explored several options for his philanthropy. Weighing the most pressing challenges that New Jersey families face, Brian chose to focus on education policy and facilities with the goal of making high-quality early childhood education more accessible.
Since 2009, Maher Charitable Foundation has invested in brick-and-mortar projects and in policy efforts to increase children’s access to early learning statewide. The Foundation has collaborated closely with early learning providers in Northern New Jersey to construct state-of-the-art additions or new structures in three communities to serve more children from low-income families.
Recognizing that nearly 50,000 children in New Jersey lacked access to the state’s high-quality Pre-K programs, the Foundation launched the nonprofit Pre-K Our Way in 2015. The organization engaged multiple stakeholders in a successful initiative that persuaded state leaders to fund the expansion of the existing state-funded Pre-K program beyond the 35 high-need districts it already served to more than 175 districts by the end of 2022.
Maher Charitable Foundation continues to seek out and invest in early education to promote economic and social mobility in New Jersey. In 2022, Brian and his daughter, Foundation President Amanda Maher, expanded the focus of the Foundation to include community development and civic learning and engagement.
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