A Message to Our Supporters
This has been another incredible year of challenge, growth, and impact for Neighborhood Villages. Our vision is an early education and child care system that works for EVERYONE. In service of this vision, we innovate, scale, and advocate for solutions to the biggest challenges faced by early education and care providers and the children and families who rely on them. And with your support, that’s just what we’re doing.
Thank you for your partnership on this journey, and for being a part of our movement!
Our Year in Review
Neighborhood Villages continued to grow in both impact and scale, delivering solutions to the biggest problems faced by early education and care providers and the children and families who rely on them.
From demonstrating — in our Neighborhood program — that we can do better for young children and their families through collaboration, coordination, and investment in early education and care infrastructure, to helping hundreds of early educators access the professional development training they need to succeed, we are modeling what a fully functional, high-quality child care system can be and what it should deliver.
“Neighborhood Villages has done an exceptional job of engaging a large base of diverse partners, building a talented team, and collaborating with local and state governments. They’ve really built a coalition around advancing their mission; it has been exciting to be a part of this organization.”
- Emily and Henry Ford III, Philanthropists and Neighborhood Villages Board members
Systems-Change Innovation in Action
Through our partnership with five extraordinary early education centers across Boston, The Neighborhood is where we’re modeling a ground-breaking school district for early education and care providers. 2021-2022 marked the first full year of operating The Neighborhood across all five of our incredible partner providers. We deepened and expanded supports in our Family Navigation and Operations Management programs and introduced new supports in Teaching and Learning.
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Family Navigation and Operations Management
Through the Neighborhood Program, Neighborhood Villages provides Neighborhood partners with funded staff positions that promote capacity-building through two specific program roles — a Family Navigator and an Operations Manager. These positions are accompanied by flexible discretionary funds to meet emergency family needs or to make small capital improvements to partners’ facilities.
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Teaching and Learning: Megina Baker
Megina Baker, Director of Teaching and Learning at Neighborhood Villages, joined us in this new role to support Neighborhood school leaders, focusing on excellence in instructional quality, positive relationship building, trauma-informed care practices, learning through play, and enhancing staff ability to communicate effectively with parents and caregivers.
What We Test in The Neighborhood,
We Work to Scale Statewide.
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Professional Pathways
Since November 2021, the Professional Pathways team has made incredible progress in launching an educator-focused resource system that supports early educators with enrollment in college courses and advancement toward CDA credentials.
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Business Management Training
Over the last year, Neighborhood Villages and EEC expanded our free, statewide Business Management Training program to include both Family Child Care (FCC) providers as well as Group and School Age (GSA) administrators.
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Testing
We made our first-of-its-kind COVID-19 testing program for the early education and care sector available to all EEC providers, educators, and young children in their care across the Commonwealth, scaling statewide and gaining national recognition.
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Formula
Using the same logistics and fulfillment partners we used for COVID-19 testing, we were able to secure a reliable source for formula and delivered 700 pounds of it to our partner centers across Boston, to provide to the 800+ families they serve.
Donor Spotlight: Turahn Dorsey
Chief Impact Officer, Eastern Bank Foundation
“Neighborhood Villages is approaching this challenge differently from a lot of folks in the early education and care policy and advocacy space, because they are helping to create solutions on the ground. They are tapping into private markets and systems to bring innovation to places to guarantee that we have equitable access to the highest quality care and education. They are creating innovations that systems statewide, nationwide can adopt. Then they are tapping into public policy. They’ve got their finger on the pulse and I consider them an accelerator for new solutions in early education and care. This is especially critical right now, because we’ve seen how fragile some of our public systems are. We see how fragile our markets are. This is not a time to go back to things that weren’t working well for us before. It is a time to leap forward and invent the things that we want to work for us going forward. That’s what Neighborhood Villages is doing.”
Policy Reform
In addition to our direct service programming, Neighborhood Villages leads advocacy and public education initiatives to actively drive policy reform. This year, we advocated successfully for an historic investment in Massachusetts’ early education and care sector, through helping to obtain state fiscal year appropriations unparalleled in recent budget cycles. We also successfully advocated for the extension of the Commonwealth Cares for Children (C3) Stabilization Grants.
No One is Coming to Save Us
In 2022, we released the second season of No One is Coming to Save Us, a nationally acclaimed podcast produced in partnership with Lemonada Media about the imperative to fix the child care crisis.
In the News
Throughout the year, we worked hard to increase awareness and build momentum for a child care movement, both in the community and in the news. This year, we were thrilled to be able to bring many of our partners, providers, and community members together — sometimes even in person! — at several events and forums.
Our Financials
Our Supporters & Partners
We are grateful to the individuals and institutions who generously supported our mission and programs this year.
View the 2021-22 list of supporters, staff, and board of directors here.