More than 20% of U.S. households speak a language other than English at home, with Spanish by far the most common. Families are also more likely to engage with educational materials when those resources are available in their first language.

That’s why PNC Crezca con Éxito, the Spanish-language identity for PNC Grow Up Great, has been keeping Spanish-speaking little learners and families top of mind since the company's early childhood education initiative launched in 2004.

“PNC Grow Up Great has been a Spanish and English initiative since early on, with the reasoning that it was simply the right thing to do to help prepare children across our communities for success in school and life,” said Sally McCrady, chair and president of the PNC Foundation. “Since PNC also offered its products and services in both languages, it was important to model our early education initiative this way as well.”

Bilingual learning in action

Here are some examples of PNC Grow Up Great’s Spanish-language offerings and initiatives:

  • New educational resources are launched each year in partnership with Sesame Workshop, the creators of Sesame Street, and they’re always created in English and Spanish. The latest offerings focus on sparking children’s curiosity and building school-readiness skills in everyday moments outdoors.

  • The PNC Grow Up Great Lesson Center offers 150+ bilingual lesson plans for pre-K teachers and families of young children.

  • Since 2021, PNC Grow Up Great has collaborated with the PBS Foundation to amplify many of these lessons on PBS LearningMedia, with each of the enhanced lessons and accompanying resources available in Spanish as well as English. This has significantly expanded the Spanish resources available on PBS LearningMedia, a reputable source of educational materials for parents and educators.

  • PNC has been a proud sponsor of Fred Rogers Productions’ Alma’s Way since the PBS KIDS series launched in 2022. The show follows Alma Rivera, a confident 6-year-old Puerto Rican girl in the Bronx who learns self-awareness, empathy, and problem-solving by sharing her “way” of figuring things out with viewers.

  • Since 2014, PNC Grow Up Great has supported the TMW Center for Early Learning + Public Health at the University of Chicago on various aspects of their 3Ts program – Tune In, Talk More, and Take Turns. 3Ts resources, available in English and Spanish, foster knowledge and build skills that parents can use to promote foundational brain development in their children, and help them feel empowered as their child’s first teacher.

  • PNC Grow Up Great shows up in local communities with an emphasis on Spanish and English – through the Mobile Learning Adventure, Be My Neighbor Day events and a variety of educational resources offered to families.

  • Every April, when PNC celebrates "Great Month" as an opportunity to highlight PNC Grow Up Great, "Great Readers" resources are available in both English and Spanish. These enable PNC employee volunteers to read the Great Readers book to pre-K children in Spanish, and they get a Spanish-language copy to take home. Teachers also receive an accompanying classroom resource in Spanish to help bring the book to life.

  • The PNC Grow Up Great website, fact sheet and online resources are available in Spanish and English.

  • All paid media marketing campaigns are launched in both languages, like a recent campaign that further integrated PNC Grow Up Great into the company's brand philosophy, highlighting the importance of boring in all that is brilliant. The campaign targeted the program’s audience of parents, educators and caregivers of children from birth through age 5 with memorable words and visuals, underscoring the importance of a strong foundation in helping a child succeed in school and life.

"For PNC Grow Up Great, bilingual offerings are about more than language," said Julie Sudduth, PNC regional president for Greater Houston. “They reflect a broader commitment to supporting Spanish-speaking families across our communities and meeting families where they are, so every child has the opportunity to grow, learn and succeed.”