Non-profit fills void left by daycare cuts

Around the time that the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) announced funding cuts to the city’s chronically under-enrolled daycare centers, a small business development organization graduated its latest batch of low-income entrepreneurs who had been primed to fill some of the void created by the childcare cuts and the closures that could potentially result.
The Corona-based Queens Business Outreach Center (QBOC), part of a citywide micro-enterprise development network, had, for the fifth time, trained a group of entrepreneurs to operate home-based childcare facilities. In lieu of the ACS funding cuts, home-based daycare is fast becoming a viable and more affordable alternative to center-based programs, explained Rosalinda Martinez, the Child Care Business Development Project Director of the non-profit BOC Network.
QBOC’s Child Care Means Business Training, conducted in Spanish over 55 hours, has graduated 170 people in Queens since its 2003 inception, and on December 2 the organization presented certificates to 17 more entrepreneurs. The graduates, from across northwestern Queens, could potentially open up their homes to over 150 children in need of daycare.
“There’s a lot of training that offers health and first aid but there wasn’t really anything that gave them [entrepreneurs] the tools to be successful with the business side,” Martinez said, explaining why QBOC began offering its childcare training program.
From success planning to contingency plans to marketing, not to mention health and safety instruction, QBOC’s free program focuses on providing entrepreneurs with the tools they need to get their businesses up and running.
Recent graduate Doris Jimenez, 47, said she used to think her business was nothing more than a dream.
“After I started attending the training, I realized my dream was turning into a business,” the East Elmhurst resident said proudly.
Originally, from Peru, Jimenez said her husband and sons would help with her program, which she hopes to open in January.
Jimenez lauded home-based care for the “individualized attention” it offers children, as opposed to large daycare centers that sometimes house up to 40 kids per classroom. Her house, Jimenez said, will be like a home away from home for the children in her care.
“It’s like a familia” for children, she said, using her native Spanish.
“My daycare - it has everything,” Jimenez said, noting that she has all the licenses needed to get started. “We’re just waiting for the children, that’s it,” she said with a laugh. “I’m ready.”