The Manhattan Times

Childcare workers learn how to get a leg up

by Adam Garrett-Clark

On Aug. 12 in Washington Heights 12 more women gained the opportunity to increase their annual incomes by $15,000 each when they graduated from the Childcare Business Development Program (CCBDP), a 30-week course on building and expanding a successful childcare business offered by the Washington Heights and Inwood Development Corporation (WHIDC).

The class has a waiting list of over a year, with several hundred women in Northern Manhattan and the surrounding area waiting for this virtually free business primer, taught completely in Spanish, that has seen real results for its graduates.

Before enrolling in the program, the average household income of the 186 women who have graduated since 2004 was under $20,000, according to CCBDP director Geiny Paulino. Many were unemployed or received public assistance. After graduation the students’ average annual incomes have grown to $35,000, she said.

“There’s a demand for this program,” said WHIDC executive director Dennis Reeder. “People see that there’s real money in this.”

The 60-hour course, offered three times a year, teaches potential childcare providers how to start and run an efficient business.

Students are taught marketing, accounting, legal and management skills relevant to childcare providers, as well as how to access grants and loans.

Reeder said the program was developed to educate a large number of women who enter into the childcare field through welfare-to-work programs but aren’t necessarily given the tools to create success.

The program is a partnership between WHIDC and the Business Outreach Centers Network, a citywide business development nonprofit that offered a similar English language class in Brooklyn. WHIDC adapted the class to its primarily Spanish audience. The class is now the model for future classes to be offered in Spanish across the city. 

The Washington Heights-based program is supported in part by the Verizon Foundation, the Empire State Development Corporation, State Senator Eric Schneiderman, JP Morgan Chase and Capital One Bank. 

When Maria Rozon first began her childcare business in her apartment on W. 175^th Street 10 years ago, she knew nothing about accounting, or doing her taxes. She had taken the required 15-hour class to get her child-care provider’s license but hadn’t the slightest idea of what to do if the auditors showed up at her door.

Rozon made about $23,000 a year, she remembers, and operated a meager business caring for about three children at any given time.

It’s a common situation, according to Reeder.

The course taught her how to save money on taxes, turning those toys, electricity bills and even 30% of her rent into business expenses. The knowledge she gained of government childcare agencies and the stipends they provide to low-income parents allowed her to change her marketing focus from wealthy private clients to low-income mothers, a much larger market in Northern Manhattan.

Rozon now earns $34,000 a year, cares for seven to eight children and writes off all of her apartment’s rent as a business expense because she was able to move her family to the Bronx.

“Mi negocio es stupendo (My business is stupendous),” she said, as a couple of non-napping 5-year-olds spun around her sofa, flying airplanes made of building blocks. Rozon is now an instructor in the CCBDP and helps other women like herself become empowered.

The beauty of a childcare business, Reeder said, is that you need very little to begin. You can start it right in your apartment, with very little start-up capital. You don’t need any fancy degrees or even to speak English. And with growth, childcare providers can earn as much as $84,000 a year.

Rozon went into childcare after becoming fed up with her own work situation. She was working long hours at a department store downtown, coming home at 8 p.m. and paying someone else to care for her five-year-old daughter. As a childcare provider, she realized, she could spend more time with her daughter and earn money at the same time.

It’s fulfilling work she said. For many of the children, whose parents work long hours to support the household, her time with the children provides important stability, ritual and love in their lives.

Caring for children in her community so their parents can work is very important she said, adding, “Es la clave que una comunidad puede crescer (It’s the key to the growth of a community).”

 The Manhattan Times is the bilingual newspaper of Washington Heights and Inwood.