Our Story
South Shore Stars was founded by Rosemary Wahlberg and is a product of Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty” which for the first time since WWII provided federal funding for child care, recognizing that this funding was vital for families to be able to gain economic self-sufficiency. However, the mothers and community leaders, who founded Stars in 1970, wanted to create an entity that would go beyond providing only child care.

From Stars inception, our programs have focused on quality early education, academic, enrichment and family support, all of which are necessary to ultimately break the cycle of poverty. We have stayed true to our original mission, with two interconnected goals:

Enable parents to work
Support each of our children to thrive
As we expanded in 2005 to offer middle and high school academic support programs and later home visiting, we have remained focused on these two goals.

Stars serves over 1,000 children, making a long-term investment in our families. We provide programs to a diverse population, concentrating on school readiness and academic achievement, by promoting healthy development and strengthening families. Many of our children grow up with us, becoming successful young adults. Stars is a unique organization in our communities because of our focus on low-income families and historically underserved children/youth, coupled with our ability to provide continuity of services from infancy to high school. Simply put, no other agency is doing this comprehensive work in our communities.

We achieve our mission by communicating our values effectively and upholding our standards of excellence and accountability throughout our organization. Our organizational structure provides clear lines of responsibility that support achieving Stars’ objectives. Both private and public funders consistently commend Stars for our management expertise which result in high quality programs, maximum enrollment, sound fiscal management and compliance with all funder requirements and regulations.

Our low staff to child ratios, specialized training, volunteer program and social services staff are critical to providing the kinds of programs all children need to grow to their full potential. Ongoing program evaluation and assessment of children’s progress ensures that we are achieving our goals and objectives. Over the past five decades, Stars has been a leader in our communities and statewide, advocating for historically underserved children and families, bringing stakeholders together to develop new initiatives, identifying potential resources and advocating for effective program policies further advancing our mission.