Photo by Justin Jane Photography
MyVyllage Tackles the American Child Care Crisis in Colorado Communities
Most parents probably understand how difficult it had become to find affordable, quality child care. Not only are there waiting lists, parents are dealing with alternatives that don’t provide the consistent quality of care they expect for their children.
Thirty-two percent of families in Colorado have working parents, leaving nearly 250,000 children under the age of six needing child care. While parents are paying college-level tuition for child care, the professionals working hard to care for Colorado’s children barely earn enough to make ends meet with an average annual salary around $22,000.
Colorado’s average cost of in-home child care hovers around $10,000 each year, and the wait lists for top providers numbers are in the hundreds, forcing families to think about child care before their child is even born.
After interviewing hundreds of families, Boulder-based mother Elizabeth Szymanski, who is also co-founder and CFO of MyVyllage, has a solution. She found that the most affordable childcare was in-home care, but that the various providers weren’t collaborating in a unified manner. She wanted to build a system where she could work with existing high-quality home care providers and mentors in the community, in order to expand child care options and highlight the fact that this can be a viable career path for parents.
She’s doing that with the launch of MyVyllage, which connects families with high-quality, affordable child care providers and provides a robust mentoring environment to train and support educators.
“Working as a home child care provider can be a lonely career path, but it doesn’t have to be,” said Szymanski. “We used to raise kids as a community, but now with our technological and mobile society we no longer have three generations in the same town. We see high-quality, in-home family child care rebuilding that fabric; now home care providers can connect with others, which creates a useful training network and improves overall quality.”
The MyVyllage child care platform helps bring new providers into the local workforce, gives them all the tools they need to run a home business, and provides hands-on training in best practices established by top early childhood education experts. For families, MyVyllage helps meet the overwhelming – and unmet – need for affordable, quality child care.
“We recognize the invaluable role child care providers play not only in families, but in the entire economy, so we’ve invested in training our educators to be community leaders who are valued, connected, and mentored to grow and thrive,” said Szymanski. “It’s what we expect them to do for our children and it’s the least we can do for them.”
How Does It Work?
MyVyllage makes it easy to start an excellent in-home daycare, offering business support, expert mentorship, and upward mobility. It does this using world-class curricula approved by the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University to front- and back-office tools like accounting, marketing and scheduling. It not only offers personalized support and guidance from the nation’s best early childhood educators, but it helps new providers become licensed, and increases supply to meet demand.
“By sharing knowledge and fostering the community, we are opening pathways to increase otherwise stagnant earning potential,” added Szymanski. “We do this by offering educators the chance to elevate and become mentors in their community.”
In order to ensure high-quality, MyVyllage in-home child care providers are all parents, who go through a hand-selected vetting process that includes in-depth interviews, background checks, and references. They also must be state licensed and have comprehensive insurance.
“We love the ability to mentor other new providers and bring new folks into this incredibly rewarding career path, while also gaining the opportunity to highlight the valuable role that early childhood educators play in communities,” said Steph and Roger Olson, co-owners of Kids’ Castle and MyVyllage mentors. “MyVyllage provides this and so much more.”
Families in the Aurora, Boulder, Denver and surrounding areas can apply for spots with MyVyllage-trained educators. Families benefit from access, affordability, quality, and peace of mind. Parents receive detailed information on curriculum and services, help with navigating local resources, and communication tools that keep them in touch with children in care, including easy enrollment to meet demand. They are also encouraged to offer small, nurturing in-home environments and a choice of Harvard-approved, evidenced-based child-led curricula designed around cognitive and social development.
“We are removing the anxiety-provoking business details so providers can focus on the children,” added Szymanski. “And, our providers are connected with local elementary schools where they are coming in to kindergarten well prepared, in the top quartile of their class. In a sense, it’s more than daycare; it’s a high-quality type of preschool.”
MyVyllage is available in Aurora, Boulder and Denver, with additional markets to launch early next year. For more information or to join the community, visit www.myvyllage.com.
