Statements

Mission

To Provide Hope for the Families We Serve

Background

In 1995 Otter Creek Church of Christ established a task force to find a better way to draw urban and suburban families together and to provide excellent academic, cultural, and social opportunities for urban children. The church's forty-year collaboration with Youth Encouragement Services in tutoring elementary school children had led members to believe that they were not reaching children early enough, that early intervention and partnership with parents was needed, and that their own successful suburban preschool program could be replicated for urban children. The entire church participated in planning, designing, and equipping the facility. Through individual contributions, donations from foundations (i.e.,Frist Foundation, MDHA, Memorial Foundation,Tennessee Economics and Community Development and three private family foundations) and additional fundraising activities (i.e., an annual golf tournament, a 5-K race, a variety of sales), the church built and paid for the $750,000 facility in two years. WRCCC opened its doors September 14, 1998, with three full-time staff and no children.Since that time we have served between forty-five and fifty-five children from low-income families on a regular basis, from 6:30am to 5:30pm, five days a week, year round. Though licensed for seventy children, we keep our numbers and teacher/ ratio consistent with the Three-Star-Quality guidelines of the state. In 2001 we received the state's highest rating (Three-Star Quality) and we have kept that rating each year.

Impact

The Wayne Reed Christian Childcare Center maintains a state-designated Three Star Quality Program. We had 18 Pre-K students to graduate from our Community Base Site entering Metro's Kindergarten Programs. 94 % of 4-year old children enrolled at Wayne Reed demonstrated age appropriate reading Readiness. Goals:Continue 3 star rating from the Tennessee Department of Human services as occurred annually since the program's inception in 1998. Increase usage of our center library, with an average number of books checked out per month, rising from 78 books to 269.95 % of 4 year old children enrolled at Wayne Reed will demonstrate age appropriate reading readiness before entering kindergarten .

Needs

1. Our Pre-K class and other classes need funding for the summer break even though we still have children. We must find the funding needed (approx. $22,000) to hire teachers and continue our program. 2. A volunteer coordinator3. Help marketing our high-quality program to low-income parents needing childcare so that they can return to work or go to school4. Funding for parent/child special activities and field trips (to the zoo, for example) $40005. Funding for unending facility issues with a twenty-five-year-old building which is used more than eleven hours a day, year round

CEO Statement

Wayne Reed Christian Child Care (WRCCC) has served low- income families in the JC Napier/Sudekum communities of Nashville for the past twenty-five years providing high-quality childcare for children whose parents are working or participating in training programs. Our program believes when a family seeks support and information it is a sign of family strength, not weakness. We recognize and build on the strengths of each parent and family. We are committed to providing a physically and emotionally safe environment in which at-risk children can be jump-started for school, can build self-esteem, can be taught physical safety, numbers, colors, shapes and the alphabets in both English and Spanish and encouraged to develop a love for learning. We have parent/teacher conferences, parent and extended-family meals, and parenting workshops on health and parenting issues. We provide parents with a monthly calendar and/or newsletter. Teachers receive training from conferences, workshops, on-site training sessions, TECTA, NAEYC, community colleges and universities.

Board Chair Statement

Challenges include fundraising and reaching a broader, younger donor base. Successes, however, of our board members are phenomenal: after learning that two of our teachers were working toward Habitat houses, our board president met with three churches and Habitat and those churches gave more than the $120,000 needed to sponsor the two homes. A second board member is teaching a parent to read and creating a way for her to budget and save; a third is helping a teacher with her second job as a weekend event planner; a fourth comes to sing with children each Friday; a fifth runs our donor base and acts as a volunteer coordinator; a sixth ran fifty miles around Lookout Mt. to raise several thousand dollars for the Center; and finally, our lawyer since the beginning of the board has created a fund to may most of the mortgage for our retired cook so that she can keep her home and is helping Wayne Reed himself (the creator of the Center who suffers from ALS and was the husband of the third TN victim of fungal meningitis) with financial planning and health assistance. All our board members are hands-on and generous donors.

Service Categories
Primary Category:	Human Services  - Child Day Care
Secondary Category:	Human Services  - Family Services
Tertiary Category:	-

Areas Served

WRCCC targets the Napier/Sudekum communities in South Nashville (one of our poorest neighborhoods).

TN - Davidson