There are many community organizations that participate and play an active role with their local child care providers. However, there is no person or organization whose role it is to develop and grow child care (generally speaking) within rural communities.
Economic Development professionals practice the following:
- Community Planning – we bring together key community wide stakeholders to obtain a common vision.
- Business Retention
- Business Recruitment
- Business Creation
- Business Planning
- Site Selection
- Property (re)development
- Brownfield Redevelopment
- Remove Barriers, Find Opportunities, Interface with government agencies.
- Assist with Governmental Approvals
- Lobbying state officials, agencies, and organizations
- Project Finance
- Grant Writing
- TIF
- Incentive Negotiation
Most child care providers have none of the above skills. Most agencies working with them do not either.
We, as economic developers, have the skills to be that force to grow child care. We need to bring our skills actively, with full vigor, to retaining and creating new child care businesses.
Who is on board? No more studies, no more planning, no talk about the need - we need to build child care businesses. And we, as rural Economic Developers, need to step up to that challenge with the same, if not more, effort than we put into a new manufacturing plant.
