November 22, 2022
Childcare Desert to Childcare Oasis
First, I’d like to thank Gregg Hadley for asking me to be the guest writer for today’s Tuesday Letter. I feel very honored to have been asked, and that I’m able to share today with all of you.
My name is Aimee Baker, and I am the family and community wellness agent in Wichita County. I’ve been an agent since November 2015 and can say that I absolutely love my job, my coworkers and KSRE. Another important role I play in my community is serving as the Grow & Learn Childcare Center board president, and I’m going to be talking about my experience with childcare in rural communities.
As a mom of two little ones, I’ve often felt the weight of making sure I’ve had someone to care for my kids in a safe, and nurturing environment. I’m not the only one that’s also felt this worry as a parent in our town of 2,100. It was in 2017 that I decided I want to be part of the solution, and so my work on childcare in Wichita County began.
Wichita County only has one licensed in-home daycare, and she does not accept children under age 2. This became a problem for quite a few people who were trying to decide how to start a family and still work.
I started by having a community meeting at one of the local churches in town. I asked a local person in town who worked for NetWork Kansas to step in and be a mediator for the meeting. This was important to me because by removing myself from coordinating the meeting, it allowed people in the community to speak more freely.
I was pleased to get a lot of great feedback. After this meeting I then found the first person of my team, and she and I have stuck through this since 2017. We enlisted the help of K-State child development specialist Bradford Wiles and his team to create a childcare survey. From this we were able to start to see the need that really was in Wichita County, and decide if this really was a problem -- or if we just thought it was a problem.
We found out we were right on track, and that we needed to help figure this out for our community. We developed focus groups, added to our team and began the very intense, very important hard work.
Some key things we did to be successful:
1. Met with people already in the trenches of this work.
2. Took our entire team to Nancy Daniels' grant writing workshop.
3. Paid to have an economic impact study done.
4. Spoke to my KSRE Board about the time I was going to spend on this project. This was very important because I really needed my board to understand that 90% of my time would be put into this, and that I was taking on something HUGE! I was glad to know that I had their support.
The things I mentioned above all played key parts in making the Grow & Learn Childcare Center become a reality, but honestly the biggest key to our success was our team and our partners.
We had a group of women who were committed to this project and committed to seeing the town of Leoti be here for years to come. It was our belief that without childcare we wouldn’t be able to recruit businesses, doctors, teachers and get young families to return to their roots.
We worked five years to make this a reality, and we finally opened our doors on November 1, (fun fact: our opening was exactly two years after we established our non-profit).
We made it through COVID, naysayers (we all have these right?), and we raised every single dollar from donations, pledges and grants. In the last three years we’ve received Community Service Tax Credits, and 13 grants.
It's been a roller-coaster for five years. This will always be my most accomplished project in my career. I sit here today sitting in the same center I’ve spent years working to create and can’t help but be so proud of the work that’s been done here. We’ve taken a childcare desert and turned it into a childcare oasis where parents can go to work knowing their child is in a safe, nurturing and educational place.
What greater feeling is there as an agent than seeing your hard work come to life?