About Us
Learning to Learn & Thrive since 1939!
Opportunity Early Childhood Education and Family Center is one of Palm Beach's oldest charities and has been a United Way agency since its inception. Our primary focus is to serve the children of working families through the delivery of high quality early childhood education which benefits our entire community.
Why Opportunity?
Education can change a child's life.
Opportunity is accredited by the National Accreditation Commission (NAC)
Opportunity is recognized by a Gold Seal School of Excellence by the Florida Department of Children & Families.

For four consecutive years, Opportunity has earned Five+ Stars, the highest rating awarded by its rating agency, Quality Counts of Palm Beach County.
Our Mission
Empowering the children of working families to achieve academic and life success through educational programs that embrace the whole child and through family programming.
Our History
"Help others to help themselves."
Opportunity, Inc. was founded by the compassionate and visionary women of the Episcopal Church Guild of Bethesda by the Sea in Palm Beach in the early 1930's.
Their desire was to make life better for the less fortunate.
"It was about 1931, a real slump year, no Community Chest, no agencies to relieve the suffering caused by the Depression; children so hungry, they were falling asleep in school," related Winifred Anthony in a 1972 Palm Beach Post interview.
*PB Post article 4-12-1972 by Fran Hathaway
Social worker, Mary F. Anderson, brought the plight of Riviera Beach fisherman to the attention of Winifred Anthony and Bethesda's Women's Guild.
The fisherman were descendants of loyalists who fled the Carolinas during the American Revolution and settled in the Bahamas. By 1919, 25 families had settled on the mainland of what was to become Riviera Beach.
Their normal economic struggle was impacted by the 1928 Hurricane and the Great Depression. Mary Anderson recognized the beautiful crafts the women created and their talent developed over generations of Bahamian living and working with shells, palm fronds and fish scales. Mary Anderson assisted turning their avocation into their vocation.
Winifred Anthony began the cooperative venture at the church. As the women worked at their crafts, the need for child care was apparent and Opportunity's first nursery opened. "For the first ten years community needs arose so fast we didn't have time to think of a name, said Anthony, but in 1939 we were named and chartered Opportunity, Inc."
In 1940, Mrs. Anderson and the Guild at Bethesda-by-the-Sea Episcopal Church opened a retail shop Riviera Crafts, off worth Avenue on Via Mizner. It evolved into a self-supporting industry, flourishing for 30 years. They were asked to participate in the 1941 Grand Central Palace Exhibition of U.S. Handicrafts in New York. Riviera Crafts supplied 40 shops in the Unites States.
Child care became essential to working mothers during World War II, and the Social Services Committee of Opportunity, Inc. opened the first in 1943 in Dunbar Village, a housing project in West Palm Beach. Many church women volunteered for years at Dunbar. It was one of several wartime day care centers Opportunity, Inc. would establish.
Thirteen child care /nursery schools evolved under the Opportunity format. Opportunity also opened the first Boys and Girls Club to provide after school care for working mothers. A permanent Day Care Center was built in the early 1960's on Sapodilla Avenue near Twin Lakes High School and was operational until the move to the Mary Alice Fortin Early Childhood Center in 2003 on Westgate Avenue and Quail Road.
If you’d like to learn more about Opportunity’s history, please click on this link to hear Harvey Oyer’s overview.
Picture:
First Row
Mrs. George C. Van Dusen
Mrs. Oscar W. Johnson
Mrs. James Anderson
Mrs. Edward H. White, Jr.
Miss Elizabeth Fordham
Mrs. Roscoe T. Anthony
Mrs. Lucius Pond Ordway
Second Row
Mrs. Raymond H. Neal
Mrs. Gustave A. Maass
Mrs. Bailey Brown Sory, Jr.
Miss Marjorie Nickerson
Mrs. Edward F. Hutton
Mrs. Austin B. Rittenour
Miss Madeline Fieury
Mrs. James Hollingsworth
Mrs. Clarence M. Chauncey
Third Row
Mrs. Howes Nickerson
Miss Bertha K. Evans
Mrs. Harold Cluett
Mrs. Bryant McQuillen
Fourth Row
Mr. Robert Andrews Brown
Mrs. Joseph W. Fribley
Mrs. R. J. Wean
Mr. Claence M. Chauncey
- Louis S. Clark, Honorary President (Mrs. Anthony's father).
- Charles Frances Coe, Suggested the name and donated legal services to incorporate Opportunity, Inc. January 25, 1939.
- Lester Geisler - Architectural designer for Riviera Community House.
- Gerald B. Lambert - donated the property at 311 Florida Avenue.
- Frank J. Lewis, Riviera Beach developer, donated a 10 acre property.
- E.F. Hutton donated generously The Colored Children's County Home.
- Rosa Page Welch, a nationally known mezzo soprano gave two concerts raising funds furnishings for The County Home.
- Mr. & Mrs. James E. Hollingsworth presented travelogues of their travels at The Society of the Four Arts as fund raisers.
Opportunity Today
Opportunity Early Childhood Education & Family Center offers a comprehensive nationally accredited program of school readiness training, fine and performing arts, recreation, health and nutrition, social development and field trips. Each program is specifically designed to prepare our children to begin kindergarten on an equal footing with their higher income classmates.
Opportunity is rated four stars by Charity Navigator, it is accredited by the National Accreditation Commission and has received the Gold Seal of School Excellence from the Florida Department of Children and Families. Opportunity employs fully certified preschool teachers who are required to pursue continued education in early childhood development.
Since its founding in 1939 Opportunity has expanded its mission of offering low cost, quality preschool child care to include support services for families. We currently serve 96 children and their families. There are more than 300 children on the waiting list.
Financial Reports
Opportunity Early Childhood
Education & Family Center
4171 Westgate Avenue
West Palm Beach, FL 33409
