SILVER SPRING, MD. (July 2, 2007) – Danya International, Inc. (Danya), a health communications and technology firm delivering breakthrough solutions for public health and education, has been awarded the Head Start Monitoring Support Contract by the Office of Head Start (OHS), a program office of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families. The 5-year, multimillion-dollar contract renewal recognizes the high quality of work Danya is doing to monitor and assess the performance of local Head Start programs promoting school readiness for children from birth to age 5.

"The Head Start Contract renewal is a great achievement for Danya and will help to take us to the next level of having a social impact on improving early childhood education and in other areas," said Jeffrey Hoffman, Ph.D., President and CEO of Danya.

Established in 1965, the Head Start program provides grants to local public and private nonprofit and for-profit agencies to offer comprehensive child development services to economically disadvantaged children and families, with a special focus on helping preschoolers develop the early reading and math skills they need to be successful in school. In Fiscal Year 2006, the OHS distributed over $6.5 billion to sustain local Head Start projects by more than 1,600 federally supported "grantees" nationwide.

Since 1999, Danya has been the contractor responsible for implementing the OHS’s on-site grantee review program, which includes scheduling Head Start monitoring reviews, recruiting and building reviewer teams, coordinating reviews, and analyzing and producing monitoring review reports.

"This new, multi-year contract is the result of great teamwork with the OHS and an enormous staff dedication over the past 8 years," said Hoffman. "With approximately 100 Danya employees and our partners—ICF Caliber, Cleverex, Travel Destinations, and Mobile Audit—at our side, we’ve brought specialized expertise in communications and technology to the table through our ‘best of class’ team approach."

Added Hoffman, "Our team is our critical point of distinction to ensure high-level, rapid response to the OHS’s emerging needs. I am looking forward to not only successfully maintaining our superior levels of service and continuous quality improvement, but also exceeding them."

In 2006, Danya helped the OHS revamp its monitoring process to centralize and strengthen the on-site review program by building a Web-based system to provide a uniform and objective system for assessing program compliance with Government regulations and increasing fiscal and programmatic accountability. Danya also created multiple communication channels to improve performance, including "on-demand" e‑learning, webcasts, and hyperwave for small-group interaction for geographically dispersed teams.

About Danya International, Inc.