Childcare Resource Network Awarded the Blue Skies Ahead Grant

So many of our clients are doing great things for underserved communities. That’s why Blue Sky eLearn selects non-profit organizations to receive heavily discounted products and services each year through our Blue Skies Ahead Grant. One of our recent grant recipients is the Childcare Resource Network, and this is their story.

The Childcare Resource Network (CRN) offers free live and on-demand online training to childcare professionals, parents, guardians, and anyone interested in attaining the skills required to meet the developmental needs of children in Alabama.

Before the pandemic, CRN served four rural counties with over 500 childcare providers—so rural that providers would often have to travel one to two hours to obtain face-to-face training. When the pandemic hit, CRN was forced to move all its learning content to an online format to assist providers struggling to obtain state-required training.

Additionally, CRN’s sister agencies limit the number of trainees they can accept, leading state licensing consultants to refer hundreds of underserved childcare providers to CRN to complete their mandated credit hours.

CRN found they were overburdened by their technology and the sudden need to scale from serving four counties in their region to all 67counties throughout the state. The platform they used to deliver their online learning was labor-intensive for their two-person education team; participants often had to wait weeks to receive their certificates through the mail.

Enter Path LMS™! When CRN began using Blue Sky eLearn’s Path LMS platform, they were able to streamline their certification process: ensuring learners completed all steps of their training before earning certificates and immediately issuing those certificates upon completion. Path LMS saved their team hours of manual work checking tests, creating certificates, and mailing them out.

While Path LMS saved the organization time and expanded its audience to thousands of learners, CRN also wanted to ensure that their Path LMS site design was accessible and user-friendly for their learners and staff.The Blue Skies Ahead Grant awarded CRN free site design services to accomplish their goals.
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Our Learning Strategy & Development team worked with CRN to optimize their Path LMS site, making it aesthetically pleasing and easy to navigate. With updated course templates, CRN can now quickly add new courses that match the user-friendly look and feel of their Path LMS site.

“The entire team made the whole process a pleasure. Everyone was so very helpful and really cared about our needs throughout the process.” — Kimberly Reese, Education Coordinator

Childcare providers are essential to communities—and providing accessible education to these folks is what the Blue Skies Ahead Grant is all about! We were thrilled our learning strategy and development services better enabled CRN to deliver their online trainings and look forward to seeing the inevitable impact they will have on the professional development of childcare providers in Alabama.  

Are you a 501(c)(3) or 501(c)(6) organization and a current Blue Sky eLearn client? Talk to your Client Success Manager today to see if this opportunity is right for you! Click here to learn more.