Blue Wahoos Add Donate Feature To Ticketing To Benefit Studer Community Institute

Domonique Murry got a bundle of joy in February with the birth of her son Caiden Cleveland.
Murry also received a special gift at Baptist Hospital with her new baby: A Studer Community Institute Brain Bag. The early brain development kit came in handy to help Murry with her newborn.
"The Brain Bag helped me understand the importance of talking to my baby, reading to him, singing and making eye contact," said Murry, 27, a mother of three. "It is a good tool to help mothers help their babies develop. It helps me form a bond after birth."
This season, baseball fans have the chance to be part of this effort to build an "Early Learning City" in Pensacola and help moms like Murry learn more about the best ways to build their child's brain.
For the 2019 season, Pensacola Blue Wahoos fans have the option of adding a donation to support Studer Community Institute's early learning outreach efforts when they purchase game tickets.
Online or in-person, fans will have the option to add $1 to their ticket purchase to support SCI's Brain Bag project.
"The Studer Community Institute campaign is important to me because it brings our mission statement to life," said Dakota Lee, box office and sales manager for the Wahoos. "We are happy to integrate a donation feature to our ticketing software to further support our mission statement, which is to improve the quality of life in the Pensacola area. By raising more money for SCI we are helping to support to mothers and early childhood brain development."
Since mid-2017, parents like Murry have been receiving an early brain development toolkit at the hospital, along with important information about how the path to being ready for kindergarten starts the day that a child is born, and continues through the first three years of life.
Through the end of March 2019, more than 10,000 Brain Bags have been given to families who have given birth at Baptist, Sacred Heart and West Florida hospitals as part of SCI's effort to improve school readiness in the Pensacola area.
SCI was founded by Quint and Rishy Studer, but it is a 501(c)3 nonprofit that is separate from the couple's business ventures, which include the baseball team.
SCI's two cornerstones projects - Brain Bags and Parent Outreach - aim to help parents and families see the link between early talk and interaction, healthy brain development and school readiness.
Children who are not ready for kindergarten are more likely to struggle to read on grade level by third grade. And kids who lag behind in reading in third grade are more likely to struggle throughout school.
Kids and teachers can work to overcome that gap, and data shows that our kindergarten teachers help their students make great strides in a school year. But they can't get all of the children who need the extra help to get there in just 180 days of school.
That's why reaching children before they start school is so important.
That is crucial in Escambia County, where state education data show only 45 percent of kindergartners were ready for school in 2018. In Santa Rosa, the rate is 60 percent.
The rate is essentially flat from 2017, when the Florida Department of Education began using a new testing tool to track school readiness.
"We want to reach every parent and share with them the power they have to give their child a good start to be ready for school - and ultimately life," said Quint Studer. "If we want a great community, with a great quality of life of for everyone, we have to see investing in our children as an investment in the future of the whole community.
"That's SCI's mission in early learning every day, in everything they do."
School readiness has a huge influence on school completion rates - and that is something that matters a great deal to a person's future job earnings.
Data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that a high school dropout earns an average of $21,023, compared to $31,283 for a high school graduate, and $58,613 for someone with a bachelor's degree.
Jonathan Griffith, president of Studer Entertainment and Retail, said the donation feature is another way that the Studer family of companies works to improve the quality of life in the community.
"The underlying mission of every part of the Studer family of companies - from the Wahoos to the Bodacious shops - is to make Pensacola a great place to live, work and play," Griffith said. "As a father, I see and feel the importance of that mission every day. I'm proud to be part of a group of companies that are dedicated to making that mission come true, not only for our own children, but for every child in this community."
BREAKOUT:
Brain Bags are early literacy gift bags given to new mothers before they leave the hospital. They include: a storybook, "P is For Pelican, the ABCs of Pensacola," which uses landmarks in our community to build letter awareness and encourage family reading; Baby Steps, a baby book that can be personalized to help parents track early brain development milestones in the first three years of life; a toy; and a binder of community resource information and partners to help support parents. It includes library locations, screen time guidelines, healthy lifestyle advice for first year of life, and more.
The Brain Bags are assembled by Arc Gateway's Pollack Industries. Arc offers life- and work-skills training for adults with developmental disabilities. Assembling, storing and delivering the Brain Bags is one of their contracted jobs.
The Brain Bag survey to ask parents to rate their knowledge of how talk influences early brain development before the Brain Bag, and then rate it after.
Averaged across all three hospitals, parents say their knowledge before the lesson is a 7; after the lesson, they rate their knowledge at a 9.4.