Success By 6: Early Childhood Development calendar girl

The year 2009 was the third year the Success By 6 early childhood calendars were produced, and now Gabi’s face is in nearly 90,000 homes.

United Way of the Lower Mainland is committed to helping children by significantly increasing the number of school-ready children in Metro Vancouver.

It’s breakfast time in Port Moody and Success By 6 calendar girl Gabi sits on the couch, holding a stuffed cloth doll close to her chest.

Her older sister Bella is at the kitchen table, finishing her cereal and chattering away happily in her school uniform. Dad Marcelo is cutting up oranges to take to work, while mom Frances is planning for Gabi’s upcoming fourth birthday.

The busy but happy domestic scene is a long way from the traumatic days following Gabi’s birth, when she born with an arachnoid cyst in her brain. The fluid-filled sac was pressing on her brain, and the cyst was growing so much that her balance was compromised. She needed three surgeries by the time she was two to drain the fluid.

“I think the worst part for me was the first operation. She was two months, and we needed to make a decision for this little person, and you know, it’s my baby,” says Frances, shuddering with the memory.

Since the early days Gabi has needed a steady diet of doctors, speech therapy, occupational therapy and physiotherapy, with lots of tests and help from community programs.

Marcelo and Frances are proud to see Gabi’s face on the front of this year’s Success By 6 calendar, smiling sweetly as dad Marcelo plants a kiss on her left cheek.

The 2009 Early Childhood Development calendar includes details about early childhood activities and programs to support the development of children age 0-6, and is a partnership between United Way of the Lower Mainland and the ECD Community Table in Burnaby.