Photo: Huong Vu for Strategies for Children

What happens when an early educator and a community leader team up with the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston?

Everybody wins.

That’s what occurred when two members of the Boston Fed’s Leaders for Equitable Local Economies (LELE) program saw the damage caused by the pandemic.

“After COVID-19 hit, Marites MacLean and Beth Robbins noticed a worrying trend: Dozens of child care centers were closing across central Massachusetts. And as families lost reliable child care, local businesses increasingly struggled to fill jobs,” a Boston Fed article says.

MacLean is a longtime early educator and one of Strategies for Children’s original 9:30 Call participants. Robbins was helping “jobseekers through a local nonprofit called WORK Inc.” Both women are also residents of Fitchburg, Mass. And the LELE program they participate in supports and strengthens leaders like them who are “taking on the critical work of rebuilding economic systems in Massachusetts’ smaller cities.”

As the child care shortage that MacLean and Robbins saw grew, some community members said they wanted to open new child care centers to meet the need, but, as the article explains, these intentions were often thwarted by “language barriers” and struggles navigating “the state’s online resources.”

MacLean and Robbins responded by creating “a bilingual program for Massachusetts residents seeking to open child care centers. They launched the program in March, and the first group of about 30 participants graduated in June. Most are preparing to go through the state’s licensing procedures, and there’s already a waitlist for their next session.”

Local partners also pitched in, for example:

“MacLean and Robbins worked with Fitchburg’s community development leaders to set up a forgivable loan program for Fitchburg residents who need to upgrade their child care spaces to meet state standards. If the spaces become operational, the city will forgive loans of up to $3,500.”

This inspiring, community-wide commitment is a key victory for Massachusetts and for the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, which has a longstanding interest in promoting child care and addressing the current child care crisis so that parents can go to work and help rebuild the economy.

To learn more about this powerful partnership, check out the article. It’s a great example of how local leadership can help solve a national problem.