The Champions for Young Children Symposium was developed in 2015 by the Preschool Committee of the Advisory Council for the Education of Students with Disabilities. This annual event aimed to provide a rich professional development experience around a specific theme for participants and to offer an opportunity for professionals from multiple facets of early childhood education and parents to access information and network (e.g., mental health, Head Start, pre-K (public and private), early intervention, home visitation, child care, early childhood education, early childhood special education). Based on feedback from conference evaluations, participants requested more content related to supporting children with challenging behaviors. In addition, interest in the Pyramid Model across sectors in South Carolina led us to shift the focus of the Champions for Young Children Symposium to support the broader dissemination of practices that are part of the Pyramid Model framework. Thus, The Champion’s Path: Advancing the Pyramid Model was born as part of the first Untied for Every Child event.
The vision for the SC Early Childhood Inclusion Conference grew out of SCPI’s initial work with school districts and the District Leadership Day events we hosted in our early days. This event was designed to support early childhood leadership teams to build upon program capacity to increase inclusive preschool practices. The first ECI Conference was held in Columbia in October 2022 and was hosted annually thereafter through 2025.
In 2025, South Carolina Partnerships for Inclusion, the South Carolina Child Care Inclusion Collaborative, and Pyramid PIECES decided to join forces to merge these events into one comprehensive, annual statewide conference and began planning for the first annual United for Every Child: Inclusion and the Pyramid Model in Action, which took place in September 2026. By unifying these efforts into one conference, the event strengthens cross-sector collaboration and focuses on advancing evidence-based inclusion and Pyramid Model practices while building leadership capacity to support high-quality early childhood programs for all young children in South Carolina.