A Message to Our Supporters
This has been an incredible year of challenge, impact, and growth for Neighborhood Villages. Thank you for being our partners in this work and for being a part of our movement.
Our Year in Review
Neighborhood Villages was founded to tackle the early education and care crisis head-on. We advocate for the policy reform required to ensure that all families have access to high-quality, affordable early education and care. And we pair advocacy with on-the-ground direct service programs that model what a transformed early education and care system could be. In a year that pushed an already broken early education and care sector to its breaking point, we rose to the occasion.
“Neighborhood Villages is showing us, in real time, what is actually possible and necessary for early educators, children, and families to succeed and thrive.”
— Elliot Haspel, Author, Crawling Behind: America’s Child Care Crisis and How to Fix It
Child Care is Infrastructure
At Neighborhood Villages, we innovate, pilot and scale the sort of infrastructure that a public school district provides K-12 schools, from funded staffing positions to instructional coaching and behavioral health supports, and opportunities to collaborate and share best practices. In 2020-21 we piloted and scaled the programs and infrastructure needed to meet the moment.
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The Neighborhood
The Neighborhood is our innovation lab, a network of early education and care provider partners with whom we collaboratively design, test, and evaluate solutions designed to transform the early education and care delivery system. We started 2020-21 working deeply with two centers – and by the end of the year had expanded to our current five partners. By building capacity both within and across this network of partners, The Neighborhood models what an early education and care delivery system could deliver, once it receives the resources it both needs and deserves.
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Boston Children’s Relief Initiative
When the pandemic hit, we knew the infrastructure we’d built around our partners through The Neighborhood and other programs meant that we could provide temporary, emergency services to additional programs, as well. That’s why we launched the BCRI, an emergency COVID-19 response that served over 3,400 people across a broader network of early education and afterschool providers, which had become lifelines for vulnerable children and families.
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COVID Testing
In early 2021, Massachusetts pioneered offering free, weekly surveillance COVID-19 testing to K-12 schools, however, the state failed to include the early education and care sector in this program, citing lack of public infrastructure. In response, Neighborhood Villages sprung into action. Through the BCRI, we designed and piloted a novel COVID-19 testing system designed for the unique needs of the early education and care sector. Now, that program is being implemented statewide with the Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care.
Career Pathways Spotlight: Christy Bortolotto
Christy Bortolotto, an early educator who has operated a child care center from her home in West Roxbury for 15 years, never imagined she would go back to school — until she learned about Neighborhood Villages. Since completing the Career Pathways for Early Educators program last year, she has developed a renewed sense of passion for her work and education — and is currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree at Boston College.
No One is Coming to Save Us
We launched a podcast! No One is Coming to Save Us started a new conversation around child care – and helped ignite a movement. It was among the top 15 podcasts on iTunes and garnered national attention.
Listen now – and stay tuned for the release of our second season in 2022!
Common Start & Policy Reform
Over the past year, the urgent need for child care reform emerged as a forefront policy priority. Here in Massachusetts, Neighborhood Villages helped write the Common Start legislation, which would create a universal, affordable early education and care system for the Commonwealth. At the federal level, Congressional leaders began to recognize the foundational role that child care plays in supporting a healthy economy. In 2020-21, Neighborhood Villages played a leading role in driving these conversations forward.
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This is Massachusetts’ Moment to Fix our Broken Early Education and Care System
On November 23rd, the Massachusetts legislature will hold its first Committee hearing on the Common Start legislation (H.605/S.362), a bill that would transform early education and care in Massachusetts. Here’s why we need this bill, and why we need it now.
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“We have a once in a lifetime opportunity to do something.” - The Child Care Crisis, Up Close with Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley
We are witnessing a long-in-the-making crisis in early education and child care – for providers and for families – that hinges on workforce. That’s why Neighborhood Villages partnered with Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care (EEC) and Boston-area community colleges to start Career Pathways for Early Educators.
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The Big Opportunity: breaking down the Build Back Better framework and how it will change lives
After months of back and forth, the revised Build Back Better framework was finally unveiled by President Biden. This proposed legislation would put us on a path toward doing something that has eluded us for generations — finally fixing our country’s broken child care system.
In the News
From COVID testing to No One Is Coming to Save Us, we’re influencing the public conversation on early education and care policy.
Our Financials
Our Supporters & Partners
We are grateful to the individuals and institutions who generously supported our mission and programs this year.
View the 2020-21 list of supporters, staff, and board of directors here.