Providence Talks was developed during Bloomberg Philanthropies’ 2013 Mayors Challenge. The Mayors Challenge is an ideas competition that encourages cities to generate innovative ideas that solve major challenges and improve city life -and that have the potential to spread to other cities. The City of Providence was the grand prize winner of the challenge and piloted the program with partner organizations throughout the City of Providence in 2015. When the initial Bloomberg Philanthropies’ funding finished in 2018, the City of Providence prioritized investing City dollars to this important program. In 2019, Federal Hill House became the sole provider of Providence Talks Programming, in direct partnership with the City of Providence.
In 2019, Bloomberg Philanthropies announced that five cities would be funded to replicate Providence Talks: Birmingham, AL; Detroit, MI: Hartford, CT; Louisville, KY; Virginia Beach, VA.
Today, Providence Talks continues to use technology from the LENA Research Foundation that measures the number of words that children are hearing and the amount of parent-child interactions that are taking place in the home. We offer 1:1 and playgroup models, and are developing pilot Providence Talks programming in our Early Learning Center.