SPRINGFIELD — Springfield City Council on July 1 voted to split its Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) money between two different programs in the community: the Early Child Care Business Accelerator Program at Lane Community College (LCC) and the Plaza de Nuestra Comunidad Wellness Center in Springfield. The CDBG funding supports community development activities with money for infrastructure, economic development, community centers, housing rehabilitation etc.
This fund is allocated each year to an organization that the councilors hear from and ultimately decide on. This year the council chose to allocate $45,000 to LCC’s Early Child Care Business Accelerator Program per their request and $250,000 to the Plaza de Nuestra Comunidad Wellness Center.
LCC’s Early Child Care Business Accelerator Program is finishing up its second cohort of classes and will continue new classes in the fall.
“[The program] gives people an opportunity to build a business and to provide child care, which we need so desperately,” said Kori Rodley, Springfield city councilor.
According to a study done in 2022 by Oregon State University, most of the counties in Oregon, including Lane, are considered childcare deserts. This means only 10-33% of children ages 0-5 in Lane County can access a childcare slot.
“We need to add approximately 1,500 childcare slots to move out of childcare desert status,” said Holly Mar-Conte, child care sector strategist from Onward. The program is an effort from Onward Eugene, Quality Care Connections at LCC, and the Lane Small Business Development Center to help people in Lane County start their own successful small childcare business.
After the first cohort was completed last winter there were about 100 new childcare spots in Lane County. Jason Petorak, one of the course instructors through the Lane Small Business Development Center, predicts that this second cohort will create about 75 more.
Participants attend eight classes over four months that are centered around both childcare and small business strategies, Petorak said. This is so they can become licensed registered or certified family home-based providers
“The decisions are still all in their hands, but we are going to guide them and push them in the right direction so they can make those smart business decisions,” Petorak said.
The participants are guided through all the necessary steps to make sure that their home is fit to run a childcare business in the state of Oregon even after they finish the course.
Once a participant finalizes their business model and completes the course, they receive $5,000 from the program to kick-start their business. This is where the CDBG funds will be allocated. Springfield’s CDBG funds will supply the five grand to their residents who finish the program and start their businesses in the city.
With just two cohorts nearly finished, the program is predicted to have made 175 new childcare spots in the county, according to Cheryl Henderson, director of Child and Family Education at LCC.
“As Springfield, we tend to be kind of open to being innovative and to supporting small businesses,” Rodley said, “and for me personally, being able to support businesses that are likely going to be owned by women or people from marginalized communities is exciting.”
Henderson said that in the fall the program is attempting to widen its reach with two cohorts running at the same time: one of them is focused on residents in both Florence and Cottage Grove, and the other is offered at LCC for Spanish-speaking participants.
The other program receiving grant money, Plaza de Nuestra Comunidad Wellness Center, is the “largest Latinx-serving, culturally-specific, bilingual community service provider in Lane County,” according to the memo presented to the city council, and is geared up to start developing its multicultural wellness center in the fall.
This organization is the combination of three local nonprofits serving the community: Centro Latino Americano, Downtown Languages, and Huerto de la Familia.
The memo states that they are already in phase three of their plan, and are using the CDBG funds for “eligible non-construction costs related to the project.” They plan to use the entirety of the funding by the end of 2024 and open their wellness center in May 2025.
Members from Plaza declined to comment further on their project.
