{"id":35911,"date":"2022-09-30T01:38:55","date_gmt":"2022-09-30T05:38:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/test.greenmoney.com\/2025\/?p=35911"},"modified":"2022-10-31T00:28:44","modified_gmt":"2022-10-31T04:28:44","slug":"investing-in-coastal-enterprises-child-care-business-lab","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.greenmoney.com\/2025\/investing-in-coastal-enterprises-child-care-business-lab\/","title":{"rendered":"Investing in Coastal Enterprises\u2019 Child Care Business Lab"},"content":{"rendered":"
>> Back to October 2022 Issue<\/a><\/div>\n

Creating a Replicable Model for Increasing Child Care Access\u00a0 <\/em><\/h3>\n

\"Gabrielle<\/p>\n

(Above) Rayitos de Sol, bilingual child care facility in Milbridge, Maine; photographer Sean Alonzo Harris<\/h5>\n

Juana Rodriguez-Vazquez has deep ties throughout the Spanish-speaking community in Milbridge, Maine.<\/p>\n

She first became a familiar face as teen serving food to field workers from her parents\u2019 food truck, then as a young worker in the wreath factory and blueberry fields. As an adult and mother of two, Juana continued supporting her parents\u2019 expanded food business, while working at Mano en Mano (Hand in Hand), a local nonprofit that works with farmworkers statewide and immigrants in Downeast Maine.<\/p>\n

As she rose from assistant teacher to Washington County Regional Coordinator, to Education Program Director, to Executive Director Mano en Mano, Juana became acutely aware of the lack of Spanish-language resources in the area, which particularly impacted children. Her first child has spent his infant and toddler years in a Spanish-speaking environment, but when she had to place her second child in an English-speaking, white-led child care she saw her daughter struggling with unfamiliar foods and Spanish songs and language. Juana could feel the culture that was so important to her family slipping away.<\/p>\n

One would be hard-pressed to find someone who knows the needs of her community more, and what they needed was culturally specific child care.<\/p>\n

“I had been talking to parents about the opportunities that were [in Milbridge] for childcare,” Juana recalled, \u201cand the lack of opportunities for kids to really practice their language and culture and be in a space where that was really valued and celebrated. And that was always a need, a gap that we always saw as parents missing here.\u201d<\/h3>\n