early childhood education Archives

The Transformational Work of the STAR House Foundation

July 10, 2025 by John Ray

North Fulton Business Radio

The Transformational Work of the STAR House Foundation

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The Transformational Work of the STAR House Foundation (North Fulton Business Radio, Episode 883)

In Roswell, Georgia, hundreds of children face steep challenges outside the classroom. Those challenges don’t stop when the school day ends. That’s where the STAR House Foundation comes in.

In this episode of North Fulton Business Radio, host John Ray speaks with Windy Nicholson, Maureen Curtis, and Alejandra Torchia of the STAR House Foundation, a nonprofit that provides free, on-site afterschool programs for underserved children at Title I elementary schools. These programs offer more than academic help. They provide character development, emotional support, healthy snacks, and consistent encouragement from trusted adults.

A $1,000 donation funds a full year of support for one child. Many former students are now returning as volunteers, educators, and even board members. Their “32 STARS for 32 Years” campaign aims to raise $32,000 to expand the mission and reach even more children.

If you believe every child deserves a strong start and a real chance to thrive, this conversation will show you what that looks like in action.

John Ray is the host of North Fulton Business Radio. The show is produced by John Ray and North Fulton Business Radio, LLC, an affiliate of Business RadioX®, and is recorded inside Renasant Bank in Alpharetta.

Key Takeaways from this Episode

Early intervention matters: Reading proficiency by third grade is a strong predictor of long-term academic success. STAR House helps students build that foundation.
On-campus access: STAR House operates after school in Title I schools at no cost to families, with a six-to-one student-to-coach ratio.
A full-circle model: Former students are now volunteers, educators, and board members—proof of long-term transformation.
High-impact giving: Just $1,000 supports a child for an entire year of afterschool care, tutoring, and personal development.
Community powered: STAR House depends on individual donors, sponsors, volunteers, and corporate partners to fulfill its mission.
Current campaign: “32 STARS for 32 Years” seeks to raise $32,000 to fund the upcoming school year for underserved students in Roswell.

Topics Discussed in this Episode

00:00 Introduction to North Fulton Business Radio
00:24 Highlighting the STAR House Foundation
00:46 Renasant Bank Sponsorship
01:49 Welcoming Guests from STAR House Foundation
02:14 Overview of STAR House Foundation
03:23 Challenges Faced by Underserved Children
04:35 Maureen’s Role and Experience
06:00 Details About the Schools Served
09:41 Importance of Food and Nutrition
10:16 Growth and Impact of STAR House Foundation
12:50 Partnership with Schools
15:09 The Stakes and Long-term Impact
19:05 Heartwarming Success Stories
22:09 Back to School Campaign
25:17 Volunteer Opportunities
28:40 Corporate Sponsorships and Donations
29:45 Final Thoughts and Gratitude
33:12 Closing Remarks and Sponsor Message from Beyond Computer Solutions

STAR House Foundation

STAR House Foundation is a non-profit organization based in Roswell, Georgia, dedicated to supporting at-risk children in North Fulton County through after-school tutoring, mentoring, and enrichment programs. Serving over 200 students in three Title I schools, STAR House provides a safe and nurturing environment where children can improve their academic performance, develop positive study habits, and build essential life skills. The foundation also offers a summer camp that bridges the academic gap during school breaks, focusing on retention and continued growth for elementary students.

Founded in 1993 by local volunteers who recognized the need for after-school supervision and academic support among economically disadvantaged youth, STAR House has grown to become a vital resource in the community. Its mission is to equip students with the tools and encouragement needed for personal and educational success, working closely with schools, families, and community partners. STAR House is committed to fostering diversity, inclusion, and equity, ensuring all children have the opportunity to reach their full potential and envisioning a future where every student can improve their life’s trajectory through education and mentorship.

Website | LinkedIn | Instagram

Renasant Bank supports North Fulton Business Radio

Renasant Bank has humble roots, starting in 1904 as a $100,000 bank in a Lee County, Mississippi, bakery. Since then, Renasant has become one of the Southeast’s strongest financial institutions, with over $17 billion in assets and more than 180 banking, lending, wealth management, and financial services offices throughout the region. All of Renasant’s success stems from each banker’s commitment to investing in their communities as a way to better understand the people they serve. At Renasant Bank, they understand you because they work and live alongside you every day.

Beyond Computer Solutions supports North Fulton Business Radio

If you’re a law firm, medical practice, or manufacturer, there’s one headline you don’t want to make: “Local Business Pays Thousands in Ransom After Cyberattack.” That’s where Beyond Computer Solutions comes in. They help organizations like yours stay out of the news and in business with managed IT and cybersecurity services designed for industries where compliance and reputation matter most.

Whether they serve as your complete IT department or simply support your internal team, they are well-versed in HIPAA, secure document access, written security policies, and other essential aspects that ensure your safety and well-being. Best of all, it starts with a complimentary security assessment.

Website | LinkedIn | Facebook | YouTube

About North Fulton Business Radio and host John Ray

With over 880 episodes and having featured over 1,300 guests, North Fulton Business Radio is the longest-running podcast in the North Fulton area, covering business in our community like no one else. We are the undisputed “Voice of Business” in North Fulton!

The show invites a diverse range of business, non-profit, and community leaders to share their significant contributions to their market, community, and profession. There’s no discrimination based on company size, and there’s never any “pay to play.” North Fulton Business Radio supports and celebrates businesses by sharing positive stories that traditional media ignore. Some media lean left. Some media lean right. We lean business.

John Ray, host of North Fulton Business Radio, and Owner, Ray Business Advisors — **John Ray, host of *North Fulton Business Radio* and Owner, Ray Business Advisors**

John Ray is the host of North Fulton Business Radio. John and the team at North Fulton Business Radio, LLC, an affiliate of Business RadioX®, produce the show, and it is recorded inside Renasant Bank in Alpharetta.

The studio address is 275 South Main Street, Alpharetta, GA 30009.

You can find the full archive of shows by following this link. The show is available on all the major podcast apps, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, Amazon, iHeart Radio, and many others.

John Ray also operates his own business advisory practice. John’s services include advising solopreneurs and small professional services firms on their value, their positioning and business development, and their pricing. His clients are professionals who are selling their expertise, such as consultants, coaches, attorneys, CPAs, accountants, bookkeepers, marketing professionals, and other professional services practitioners.

John is the national bestselling author of The Generosity Mindset: A Journey to Business Success by Raising Your Confidence, Value, and Prices.

Maggie DeCan, Children’s Development Academy

November 30, 2021 by John Ray

North Fulton Business Radio

Maggie DeCan, Children's Development Academy

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Maggie DeCan, Children’s Development Academy (North Fulton Business Radio, Episode 413)

The Children’s Development Academy, founded fifty years ago, focuses on high-quality early education and childcare for low-income families in North Fulton. CEO and Executive Director Maggie DeCan joined host John Ray to talk about their mission, why their work is such a compelling long-term investment for the North Fulton community, how she moved from corporate to nonprofit work, and much more. North Fulton Business Radio is broadcast from the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX® inside Renasant Bank in Alpharetta.

Children’s Development Academy

The Children’s Development Academy (CDA) enjoys a rich history of broad support, built over the past five decades.

Focused on low-income working families in our community, the CDA can serve 156 children each day ages 12 months through 5 years in our full-day early care and learning program, including three Georgia Pre-K classes.

The CDA is NAEYC-accredited (National Association for the Education of Young Children), the highest level of accreditation available to any education program, with a curriculum committed to preparing children to be “ready by five” for school success.

In July 2015, the CDA received the highest rating of three stars from Georgia’s Quality Rated program. The Quality Rated system was designed so that any parent selecting a program participating in Quality Rated can feel confident that they are enrolling their child in a program that is committed to continuous quality improvement and higher quality standards.

Company Website | LinkedIn | Facebook | Twitter

Maggie DeCan, CEO and Executive Director, Children’s Development Academy

Maggie DeCan took the helm at the CDA in November of 2016 with considerable experience in both corporate and community leadership as well as having been an active volunteer and financial contributor to the CDA and its mission. With an active board, she has led organizational rebranding as well as driving strategic priorities focused on increased enrollment, sustainable giving, and quality outcomes.

Prior to taking the helm at the CDA Maggie ran day-to-day operations for the HoneyBaked Ham national system as president and COO leading a team responsible for $500MM annually of system sales in 500 corporate and franchise operating units. Her leadership style is built on a focus on the customer and those who serve them. Prior to assuming the role of President and COO, Maggie served as Chief Human Resource Officer.

Before HoneyBaked, Maggie served in human resources for well-known retailers Circuit City, Belk, and Macy’s. Maggie graduated with a bachelor’s degree in political science and communications from the University of Michigan. Maggie’s leadership experience extends to the community where she has become a respected educational advocate, receiving an award from the State of GA PTA for visionary leadership. In 2014 she was a finalist for the Turknett Leadership Character Award and in 2015, she was honored by the Georgia Diversity Council as a “Most Powerful and Influential Woman” and in 2016 was a Womentics P.O.W. winner.

She has served on the Advisory Board for the Children’s Restoration Network and as Chairman Emeritus Roswell North Elementary Education Foundation, a 501(c) 3 that she helped found in 2009. She is also past president of the Woodstock Junior Service League.

Maggie’s free time is spent first with her family. Her husband of 35 years, Bob, is a high school economics teacher, son Riley a junior UGA and son Brady a freshman at UTK.

Questions and Topics Discussed in this Episode

How did the CDA get its start?
Why is the mission of the CDA important to the North Fulton community?
What are the benefits of early childhood education?
How can the community get involved and help with your mission?
Why did you make the switch from the corporate world to running a nonprofit?
Tell us more about the partnership with Be Rich that you are launching today for Giving Tuesday

North Fulton Business Radio is hosted by John Ray, and broadcast and produced from the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX® inside Renasant Bank in Alpharetta. You can find the full archive of shows by following this link. The show is available on all the major podcast apps, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, Amazon, iHeart Radio, Stitcher, TuneIn, and others.

Renasant Bank has humble roots, starting in 1904 as a $100,000 bank in a Lee County, Mississippi, bakery. Since then, Renasant has grown to become one of the Southeast’s strongest financial institutions with over $13 billion in assets and more than 190 banking, lending, wealth management and financial services offices in Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia and Florida. All of Renasant’s success stems from each of their banker’s commitment to investing in their communities as a way of better understanding the people they serve. At Renasant Bank, they understand you because they work and live alongside you every day.

Special thanks to A&S Culinary Concepts for their support of this edition of North Fulton Business Radio. A&S Culinary Concepts, based in Johns Creek, is an award-winning culinary studio, celebrated for corporate catering, corporate team building, Big Green Egg Boot Camps, and private group events. They also provide oven-ready, cooked from scratch meals to go they call “Let Us Cook for You.” To see their menus and events, go to their website or call 678-336-9196.

JOURNEY RADIO Erin Lyons with Child Parent Center and Desiree Cook with I Am You 360 and Anita Scott with Diamond Daughters

September 17, 2018 by Karen

Enid-Cranshaw-Moore-with-Erin-Lyons-and-Desiree-Cook-and-Anita-Scott-on-Business-RadioX1

Phoenix Business Radio

JOURNEY RADIO Erin Lyons with Child Parent Center and Desiree Cook with I Am You 360 and Anita Scott with Diamond Daughters

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JOURNEY RADIO Erin Lyons with Child Parent Center and Desiree Cook with I Am You 360 and Anita Scott with Diamond Daughters

This Journey radio segment is a dynamic conversation with three dynamic leaders of non-profit organizations that make a difference in our community by providing services to children, youth and women. Enjoy a discussion with Erin Lyons, Desiree Cook, and Anita Scott as they share how their life’s journey has given them the tools to lead organizations that make a difference.

Erin Lyons is Chief Executive Officer of Child Parent Center a non-profit with a 28-million-dollar budget, local and national leader in early childhood education. Desiree Cook is Founder, and Director of I Am You 360 and winner of the AKA Sorority Community Service Award, Sparkle Cleaners Non-Profit of the Month, and Vantage West Credit Union Non-Profit of the Year. Anita Scott, Founder of Diamond Daughters, is an ordained Minister in Glendale, Arizona, and author of “The Power of Transformational Thinking.”

These three women combined provide early childhood development, service for foster children, homeless youth and women. Their mission is to foster life transformation, develop literacy, and to ensure the emotional and physical well-being of those serviced.

Tune in and discover why they embody the Diamond Daughters Empowerment Summit theme “Fearless Women Called to Success.”

Child-Parent Centers, Inc. (CPC) is a community-based, not-for-profit corporation incorporated in 1967. CPC is governed by a volunteer Board of Directors and a Head Start Parent Policy Council that consists of enrolled parents. Its primary purpose as the Head Start and Early Head Start grantee for southeastern Arizona is to provide comprehensive early childhood, health and nutrition, and family development services to low income families with children birth to age five. CPC has successfully implemented Head Start and Early Head Start services for over 50 years. With an annual operating budget of over 28 million dollars, 560 employees, and services provided to more than 2,800 young children, CPC has an established reputation in the local and national early childhood community as an organization that places excellence at the forefront of all of its work.

Head Start, first launched in 1965, was designed to be a comprehensive school readiness program addressing the emotional, social, health, nutritional, and educational needs of preschoolers from low-income families. A program created as part of Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty, Head Start has now grown to serve infants, toddlers, and pregnant women in addition to preschoolers, and is a nationally recognized, dual-generation approach to ending the cycle of poverty.

There are three programmatic components of CPC’s efforts: school readiness, health, and family engagement. Health services include ensuring that children are up to date on medical screenings and immunizations, are connected to health insurance and a medical home, have a dental home and dental exams, and ensuring parents have information related to healthy eating and nutrition and the importance of physical activity for their children. CPC provides these services throughout five counties in Southern Arizona, including Pima, Cochise, Graham, Greenlee, and Santa Cruz, and serves rural and urban areas including Tucson, Marana, Nogales, Rio Rico, Safford, Pima, Duncan, Bisbee, Willcox, Benson, Catalina, Sierra Vista, Douglas and Ajo

Erin Lyons joined Child-Parent Centers in October 2014 as its CEO. She possesses a diverse combination of professional experience ranging from classroom teaching to management of adolescent residential facilities and organizational and community development activities. Her most recent tenure was as Senior Regional Director with First Things First, Arizona’s statewide early childhood initiative. In this position, she worked with local Regional Partnership Councils in Pima and Santa Cruz Counties as well as the tribal communities of Pascua Yaqui and the Tohono O’odham Nation. Her work involved oversight of the planning and implementation of annual budgets that infused nearly $100 million dollars in grants and contracts for early childhood and family education services throughout the Southeast area of the state between 2009-2014.

Lyons has also established a presence in the non-profit sector in the Tucson community and has experience both as a direct service provider and senior administrator as well as a volunteer. In addition to programmatic knowledge in the fields of education, child welfare, and behavioral health, she has a breadth of experience in establishing community partnerships, strategic planning, budgeting, quality assurance and compliance activities, and various aspects of employee and organizational development. She has also been affiliated with a number of community entities such as COPE Community Services, the Behavioral Health Coalition of Southern Arizona, United Way of Tucson and Southern Arizona’s First Focus on Kids Impact Council, and the Southern Arizona Association for the Education of Young Children.

Lyons began her career as a teacher and kicked off her classroom experience with preschool students at Marva Collins’ Westside Preparatory School on the west side of Chicago. She eventually taught at various grade levels ranging from first grade through high school. As an undergraduate, she attended Yale University and then Northwestern University where she completed a Bachelor of Science in Education. She is also a proud University of Arizona Wildcat and earned her Master of Public Administration at the Eller College. Erin lives with her family in Tucson where she has lived for the better part of her life.

For more information and to get involved, find ChildParentCenters on Facebook and Twitter.

I Am You 360 is a 501c3 non-profit organization that focuses on providing personalized and life skills services for primarily foster care and homeless youth in Pima County improve confidence, appearance, school attendance, academic achievement, and overall well-being.

Services include: Full size, new hygiene and hair care products according to ethnicity and gender to promote healthy hair and skin in a personalized backpack. Participants are served at one of three of I Am You 360 Hygiene Dispensaries, and each participant can have their hygiene bag refilled every 6 weeks to continue a healthy personal care routine.

They also provide a 9 week life skills programming which includes: Self Esteem, Self Awareness, Positive Thinking, and Be Good to your Mind.

Desiree Cook was born in Newark New Jersey and lived in Brooklyn New York. Mother of 7 children and married to Terry Cook. She has been a Tucson resident since 2002. She is an active member of Gideon Baptist, local hair stylist at Artistry since 2012, and created I Am You 360 in November of 2013 and became a 501c3 non-profit in July of 2014.

To learn more and to get involved with IAmYou360 find them on Facebook , Instagram or email iamyou360@hotmail.com

Diamond Daughters Motto – I am you, you are me and we are ONE. It is a global womens movement geared toward empowerment and transformation helping women reach the potential inside of them. We provide tools and resources to improve and enhance goals and vision. We recently held our 5th Anual Diamond Daughters we had the privilege to honor women in the community who were making an impact in different areas. This was the second year we also gave a scholarship to a young lady preparing for college. Our attendance was 300 women from all over the valley and surrounding cities. We host a fashion show annually to show women their worth. Women who come from Human Trafficking, , domestic violence and single mothers are part of the fashion show.

My name is Anita Scott and I was born in Hobbs, New Mexico. I’m married to Freddie Scott and we have three beautiful children..I’m an ordained Minister and have been a resident in Glendale, AZ since 2006. Diamond Daughters was founded in 2012 and established a 501c3 in 2014. It is my belief that every woman has the potential to be and do something great no matter the past or background. I have recently authored a book The Power of Transformational Thinking designed to change thinking patterns.

Connect with Anita and Diamond Daughters at aitruth@yahoo.com and Arise and Pray Ministries

ABOUT JOURNEY RADIO

Tune into Journey Radio to learn from successful professionals who will provide you with a roadmap for your own Journey to success. Our guests are individuals who want to share stories, tips and guidelines based on their own journey. Listeners will be encouraged to stay the course after learning that a journey that ends successfully is not a straight line but is a winding road of experiences that teaches life lessons that can be built upon, providing us grit and knowledge to complete our Journey.

Journey Radio’s mission is to ensure all listeners have the opportunity to learn from guest’s experiences, failures and successes enabling Journey listeners to complete their “Path to Success” at a faster pace, with fewer failures. Every lesson learned does not need to be through experience, but can be learned by listening and learning from other’s experience. Journey Radio connects listeners with guests who have completed the journey that the listener is on.

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Tucson’s Leader in Extensions, Color, Healthy Hair and All your Spa Needs. Connect with Divinity Beauty Bar on Facebook and Instagram and via email.

ABOUT YOUR HOST

Journey Radio’s host and sponsor Enid Moore-Cranshaw is a consummate business professional. Enid holds a Master’s Degree in Finance and Accounting from Regis University. She is the Immediate Past District Director of Toastmasters International, District 3 (state of Arizona) with a membership of over 4,000. District 3 Toastmasters is ranked seventh in Arizona’s networking and is one of the top organizations for communication and leadership development in the world. She is a Financial Professional and owner of Divinity Beauty Bar. Divinity Beauty Bar specializes in nails, hair styling, wigs, hair extensions, maintenance and growth. Enid is the Immediate Past Board President of Child Parent Centers (Headstart). Child Parent Centers is a leader in early childhood development and serves Southern Arizona’s underprivileged children. Her passion is early childhood development, community service, personal development, effective communication and empowering others to realize their full potential.