What does reconciliation look like? People in Hope, B.C., believe it will look like a daycare centre. Serving others, building relationships and fostering reconciliation is the mission of three distinct groups working together to open a new childcare facility for local families.
With over 300 children six years old and younger living in Hope, and only one group licensed daycare with 32 spaces for three to five years old, there is a practical need for childcare. Yale First Nation, Read Right Society and Grace Baptist Church have come together as equal partners to open a childcare centre for their underserved community.
“Our goal is to role model reconciliation and show that the church and First Nations can work together. We need to start somewhere and we want to do something tangible to come together and show we care,” says Read Right Society’s Executive Director Jodi McBride, who is currently completing her Masters in Leadership degree at Trinity Western University.
Swetexl (pronounced swa-teh-hill) Daycare and Preschool, meaning rainbow in the Halq’emeylem language, will add 37 new childcare spaces for children from 12 months to five years old. It doubles the number of spots for children and creates the only group licensed childcare centre for children 12 months to three years old.
Swetexl will operate as a social enterprise with the profits going back into the community. The newly built facility, set to open in September 2018, is on land owned by the church and will be operated by Read Right Society with Yale First Nation providing indigenous curriculum support.
It includes a Common Room for the partner organizations to offer community programs and services such as parenting, language or life skills courses. This space provides a way to serve the needs of families as a whole, according to McBride.
“On a practical level there is a need for licensed day care spots, especially for children under three. This facility will provide that. On a deeper level it opens the door way to partnerships and relationships across agency boundaries that need to happen to promote healing and reconciliation within the community of Hope. We believe that people serving together will help to build relationships that can often happen in no other way,” says Jeff Kuhn, pastor of Grace Baptist Church.
Yale First Nation Chief Ken Hansen told the Hope Standard newspaper, “If we start young with our youth here, native and non- native, and they learn to respect and acknowledge similarities in each other’s cultures and faiths,I think that will help to eliminate racism in our community, if we can start the next generation off understanding each other and not putting each other down.”
Jodi McBride graduated from TWU with a Bachelor of Arts in Communications and minor in Applied Linguistics then joined Read Right Society five years ago. The Society, which was just a fledgling operation at time, has since grown into a multi-service agency meeting needs for hundreds of people in Hope and its surrounding communities.
Although her first TWU degree left her feeling well-prepared for the workforce, now in a leadership role, she wanted to further her education to strengthen her skills.
After exploring a wide variety of programs, she chose the TWU Masters in Leadership degree. “I was really impressed with MA Lead program and its focus on transformational leadership and servant leadership.”
The degree offers five specializations so students can tailor their learning experience to their work environment, with options in Business, Non-profit, Healthcare, Education, and Christian Ministry.
“I want to strengthen my ability to make a positive difference in people’s lives and this was the best program of the options I looked at. I love it. I’m in the non-profit stream so it is a great match for my daily work. My course work helped me develop the business plan for the daycare. It’s an amazing program. I’ve grown so much personally and professionally,” says McBride. “I’m not the same person I was two years ago. It’s so personal, impactful and practical because I can apply key learnings now. I’m getting all the theory but its’ really about changing lives.”