Career Advancement

Binal Patel, chief program officer at Neighborhood Villages, said addressing low wages and supporting apprenticeships programs are needed to improve the workforce.

In recognition of National Apprenticeship Week, Neighborhood Villages released a case study on its early childhood education (ECE) Registered Apprenticeship Program that illustrates how apprenticeship programs help address the child care workforce crisis. 

Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey took the podium alongside U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo at the inaugural National Child Care Innovation Summit.

Neighborhood Villages Apprenticeship Program Graduates First Cohort and Continues to Grow

Binal Patel, chief program officer at Neighborhood Villages, previously helped launch and then ran an early childhood program for infants, toddlers and preschoolers in Watertown, MA.

As the child care workforce struggles, so do the families that rely on it. Half the problem for working parents is the cost, which can compare to a second mortgage. On average nationally, child care runs about $11,000 dollars a year per child.

The Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development (EOLWD) today announced $5 million in Apprenticeship Expansion and Opportunity Grants to 25 organizations to train and place 1,000 new apprentices across the state. The grants leverage $2.4M in state funding complemented by remaining support from federal funds to train apprentices in high growth industries like clean energy, early childhood education, and more.

Neighborhood Villages, in partnership with the Massachusetts Executive Office of Labor and Workforce and City of Boston, launched the program one year ago to help address early education workforce crisis.

Boston’s Neighborhood Villages, a nonprofit devoted to transforming the early care and education workforce, is committed not only to providing better maps to the ECE landscape, it has created a comprehensive program to help newcomers build their own paths and ladders across the terrain. | Early Learning Nation

Neighborhood Villages has formally launched its new Registered Apprenticeship Program, an urgently needed tool to help address the major workforce crisis that the early education field is facing right now. | Press Release

The fund addresses early education and child care staffing shortages in the City of Boston caused by the COVID-19 pandemic by recruiting new educators and upskilling the current workforce. Together, the grantees – Bunker Hill Community College, Urban College, University of Massachusetts Boston and Neighborhood Villages – will support almost 800 degrees or certifications at no cost to the participants. | City of Boston