Helene Marks Award Donations
Helene Marks Award History
The Helene Marks Award is awarded by the Terri Lynne Lokoff Childcare Foundation (TLLCF) as part of the annual Terri Lynne Lokoff/Children’s TYLENOL® National Child Care Teacher Awards™.
Helene Marks, in whose honor the award is named, directed TLLCF for approximately eighteen years. With a vision and passion for childcare, Helene embraced its award program and expanded it from a local program to one that reaches early childcare teachers in all fifty states plus the District of Columbia and, beginning in 2008, United States Air Force and Navy bases overseas.
The award program was designed to recognize excellence in early care and education and to raise awareness of the important role that childcare providers play in our society. Each applicant submits an educational, age appropriate project he or she designed for the classroom. Based on these submissions, fifty teachers from across the country are selected from among the applicant pool as recipients of a National Child Care Teacher Award. At a two-day event held each spring in the Philadelphia area, these teachers are honored for excellence and dedication to the children they serve. Each award recipient receives funds to implement their proposed project, as well as an individual cash award to acknowledge their dedication and achievement in childcare.
Of the fifty award recipients, one single, outstanding honoree is chosen from among ten finalists to receive an additional cash award and the prestigious honor of receiving the Helene Marks Award as National Child Care Teacher of the Year. The inaugural Helene Marks Award was presented in 2007 to Tonya Davidson of Tulsa, Oklahoma.