In early March, Community Development Educator, Victoria Solomon, worked closely with Green County Development Corporation (GCDC) and United Way Green County to help organize and launch the Child Care Business Accelerator Program in Green County. This program was designed to build capacity for child care entities and targeted a crucial need for increased child care in the county.
GCDC and United Way Green County played a critical role in getting child care stakeholders together, and UW-Extension made the relational connections that led to bilingual recruitment and bilingual programming. With the support of her fellow Community Development Educator, Jessica Spayde, and UW-Madison, Extension’s Office of Access, Inclusion, and Compliance (OAIC), Solomon helped make connections with Latinx community members and assisted with bilingual recruitment, registration, communications, and training sessions. This effort increased programming accessibility and the number of participants by offering program curriculum and content to child care organizations and potential entrepreneurs in English and Spanish.
The Wisconsin Small Business Development Center provided funding, and Wisconsin Early Childhood Association and 4-C (Community Coordinated Child Care) delivered educational programming. The program kicked off on March 2nd and concluded with 14 graduates in the 8-week accelerator program and 13 graduates of the Safety Saturday program.
As a result of participating in the program, participants shared that some intend to start a child care business, others felt more comfortable reaching out to local people and organizations to get help running their child care business, and the majority felt they had a better understanding of critical parts of running a child care business (e.g., business plans, finances, accounting, operations, record keeping, outside services, and identifying funding sources). The program in Green County led to the statewide effort, the Wisconsin Child Care Business Initiative.
