EDITORIAL: LET’S FIND A PATH FORWARD FOR GROWING DREAMS

Growing Dreams Learning Center makes no bones about it: It needs support from the community if it is going to remain open. That means the community must step up, and here are a few suggestions.

As the lead story in this week’s issue of The Courier lays out, Growing Dreams Learning Center is in trouble. Financial challenges and facility limitations are taking their toll, and if something doesn’t change, the daycare/preschool center will close.

And that wouldn’t be good.

So how can the Freeman community help save Growing Dreams Learning Center? Let us count the ways.

1. Visit the Hometown Christmas festivities on Saturday, Nov. 30 at the Freeman Community Center and enjoy a lunch provided by the daycare/preschool facility. It’s a freewill offering, so give generously. Very generously.

2. For those unable to attend, and who have the means, write Growing Dreams a check as a symbol of support.

3. Sponsor rent. Growing Dreams needs to pay $700 a month to use the space inside the Bethany Mennonite Church to operate its center. The church has been generous in waiving that fee through the end of the year, but it can’t be expected to do that indefinitely. If one business, organization or individual could take care of the rent for just one month, it would save the center $8,400 this next calander year.

4. For those organizations designed to care about the future, well-being and growth of Freeman — the Freeman Community Foundation, Freeman Community Development Corporation and Freeman Growth Foundation — pony up. Supporting childcare is every bit as important as land and business development. Maybe even more. Also, see No. 2.

5. If childcare really is a feeder program — and it is — then the schools should have an active role. So should health care. Freeman Public Schools and Freeman Regional Health Services could take part in this process of salvation, renewal and reinvention. At the very least, have a conversation to see what role these well-established entities could play.

The Freeman community has a long history of getting things done when it matters most, and that has led to all that Freeman has today. If ever there was a time to rally, this is it.

As a Growing Dreams board member and mom said, “If we don’t get behind our daycare, we’re going to have a real problem on our hands.”

One hundred percent.

Jeremy Waltner | Editor & Publisher