Following community efforts on “strategic doing”, facilitated by the Dane Hansen Foundation, it became apparent that our town, much like others throughout Kansas, was suffering from a drought of childcare.  Our existing providers were doing everything they could to expand capacity, but we continued to see families held back by the choice between long wait lists or long commutes to out of town facilities.

In late 2021, a coalition of experts was assembled.  After a series of meetings, it was determined that the most appropriate course of action was to open a nonprofit facility, with the goal to serve as many children as possible while maintaining and cultivating additional home-based or other for-profit capacity in the community.

One thing that we recognized though, was that although there was a childcare shortage, families in our community have other needs that hold them back from finding success.  We quickly determined that providing care and service to the entire family was our best approach to building a strong, resilient community made up of strong, resilient families.

Our hope is to grow our capacity to eventually provide the following to support and strengthen Bennington families: