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This post was originally published on Outlier Media.
Gwendolyn Shivers has spent time taking care of other peoples’ children for nearly half a century, since the 62-year-old was just 13. But when she had her own children, as well as a job, the Brightmoor resident saw that there were limited child care options in her neighborhood.
The working mother struggled to find care for her children and could not take time off work when her kids needed her to do so. She wasn’t alone. Shivers connected with several women who were getting their GEDs through a program at Hubert Elementary School but who missed sessions because they could not find child care. So, she watched the children of GED students for free for the next two years. Then, with help from the school’s principal, she started her in-home child care business, Gwen’s Heavens Angel’s Day Care.
Shivers is a part of the Brightmoor Childcare Quality Initiative (BQI), a group of about 16 child care providers working to improve access to care for families in the neighborhood, with emphasis on those who cannot afford to pay. BQI gives member child care centers access to funding and provides child care scholarships to families. The initiative also offers special benefits like a diaper pantry and field trips.
All of the child care providers in BQI are women and the group includes both formal and in-home care centers. Member Kai Young owns both an in-home center and a formal child care center called Squiggles and Giggles. She has been with the organization since it was formed in 2008.
“It started off by just needing diapers and formula for some of the families. That ended up leading to a pantry that was opened for the children of the families that we cared for,” she said. “And it went from that to saying, ‘OK, well now we need resources because the parents are having a hard time paying tuition.’”
BQI is funded by nonprofits including the Max M. & Marjorie S. Fisher Foundation, as well as IFF which provides grants for child care center upgrades. IFF is a partner in Hope Starts Here, a city-wide initiative supported by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and The Kresge Foundation, that supports young children and families. The initiative has six imperatives, or goals, to improve and provide quality early childhood education, health, and access to care.
In addition to renovating child care spaces, IFF has worked with providers to train staff on best-practices, including how certain paint colors can overstimulate a child’s brain.
“IFF came in and explained the way the mind works and how the colors should be soothing,” Young said. “Prior to them getting on board I didn’t have the education as far as knowing what colors do to a child. With the fluorescent lights that we had in the ceiling, I didn’t understand the buzzing sound could be affecting them.”
Now her walls are light teal and cream, a calming contrast to the red and yellow paint design she originally decorated with. Between her in-home and offsite care centers, Young tends to about 35 families, with children between the ages of zero and 12.
IFF also assisted BQI providers in taking a course through the National Wildlife Federation on the importance of outdoor learning. To bring this benefit to the children, IFF helped Young build an outdoor learning space that encourages both learning and play.
“Being African American, we didn’t grow up doing things in nature like that,” she said. “I was that parent who always told my children, ‘Don’t pick up that bug,’ or ‘Don’t get dirty.’ Then I realized how I’m stunting their growth by not allowing them to be able to explore, to feel the textures of different flowers and plants, and see them grow with their own eyes. It’s important to let them walk along a dirt path, pick up rocks, and notice the different shapes and sizes of the rocks. There’s so much to learn.”
Shivers echoes a similarly enriching experience with IFF.
“They came and made my home day care look like a center,” Shivers said. “They replaced all my walls, lighting, floor, and gave us some equipment to make the site better for learning and a more safe environment. Before, it just looked like a home with a couch, TV, and seating area.”
On Detroit’s west side, IFF also supports the work of Zina Davis, the Executive Director of Children of the Rising Sun Empowerment Center. This center uses a holistic approach to child care with large windows to allow in natural light, yoga and meditation, live plants in each classroom, wooden furniture, and salt lamps for energy cleansing. The children call Davis “Mama Zina.”
“The whole environment is just warm and inviting. It doesn’t have that institutional-like setting so it feels more like home,” Davis said. “Some of the parents have said it feels like they’re dropping their children off at auntie’s or grandma’s house… We have this oath that we say, ‘By any means necessary, we are here to support the baby.’”
Children of the Rising Sun Empowerment Center doesn’t just focus on children. They have a nine-month program called Momma’s Healing Room where the mothers in the community meet once a month for two hours of talk therapy and self care. The moms decide what issues they want to discuss in the peer-to-peer circles, and the center provides free childcare. It culminates in a healing retreat for the mothers in the ninth month of the program.
“We were noticing, we’re supporting the children’s social and emotional development. We’re doing everything that we can, and we seem to not focus on the biggest part of that, the first teacher, which is the caregiver,” Davis said. “When we look at challenging behaviors, we support the children here at the school but when they go home, they’re going to the same environment that’s causing those behaviors.”
Davis has run the Children of the Rising Sun Empowerment Center in partnership with MiSide for the past eight years. Her home-based center was the first to receive a four-star rating from Michigan’s Great Start to Quality program, which evaluates the quality of early childhood care and education centers in the state.
On Detroit’s east side, IFF helped develop the McClellan Early Childhood Center alongside Matrix Human Services to provide care and education to 96 children in the Gratiot Woods neighborhood. The 15,000-square-foot facility is located at the former Pingree Elementary site and is slated to begin programming in January 2025.
Rick Raleigh, IFF’s Senior Project Manager, was the lead developer for the McClellan center.
“The big design elements are things like natural light in the classrooms. There are researched-based reasons to do these things, because they improve learning outcomes for kids,” Raleigh explains. “Nature and biophilic design is super important, so anytime we can bring in natural elements we try to do that. It’s not supposed to just be a daycare where kids go there and play. It’s to learn. So we’re trying to optimize that as much as we can.”
The McClellan Early Childhood Center also aims to address blight in the Eastside neighborhood by increasing services available to the community. IFF is a lender to nearby Detroit Prep elementary school.
“Detroit Prep, which is about several blocks away, has really stabilized the housing in the area and it kind of trails off over where McClellan is located,” Raleigh said. “The hope was that by connecting those two investments between the neighborhood we’ll have a pipeline of ready learners going into Detroit Prep and the housing stock around there will also benefit long term.”
For people like Shivers, Davis, Young, and Raleigh, who have children of their own, their motivation for bettering Detroit’s child care system is first hand experience.
“I keep going because I know how hard it is for parents to find a safe environment for their children and someone that will love their children as if they were her own children,” she said. “And the children keep me young at heart.”
IFF is also partnering with Congress of Communities to build a child care center in Southwest Detroit, which they hope to open in the fall of 2026.
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