Tuesday, June 22, 2010

5-Star Ratings

At many child care centers, the goal of licensing is to simply stay operational.

But not here.

Our goal is to achieve 5-star ratings at all of our locations. A lofty goal? Absolutely! For those of you reading this who have experience within the child care community, you know that achieving a 3 or 4 star rating will get you lots of business. But 5 star? That means the children we are serving here through free programs are getting the best of the best quality!

At BC Main, we bumped up from a 4-star to a 5-star rating 2 years ago, achieving 13 out of 15 points.

But for two of our sites, "bumping up" from a 4-star wasn't good enough... they wanted to achieve the 5-star right away! Congratulations to our two newest sites, the Jennings Center and Siegle Avenue, for achieving 5-star ratings!

For more information about the rating system used by the North Carolina Division of Child Development, click here.

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Impact Charlotte-The Impact


A couple of weeks ago, 30 or so volunteers came to Bethlehem Center ready to serve as part of Impact Charlotte. We had prayed for no rain, since there were very few projects to be done inside, and instead were greeted with the reverse: 85-degree-plus weather, cloudless skies, and high humidity. The hard thing about times like this is that the kids aren't there, so there are no "kid breaks" and volunteers aren't directly rewarded with hugs.

The volunteers, representing 11 different churches, 9 of which were UMCs, started at 9am and worked until 2pm, some even opting to work through lunch.

The projects that were completed?
  • 3 signs cemented in
  • Digging holes for 4 more signs then cemented in
  • A new flower garden at Southside
  • Prepping of a vegetable garden
  • Trees planted
  • Bird feeders hung
  • Sidewalks cleaned
  • Campbells Soup Labels clipped and sorted
  • Tutor room cleaned out

The group worked hard to serve the children of the Bethlehem Center. We thank these volunteers for all of their hard work.

But more touching, we noticed a "present" left for us as we were locking up that day. It was a note left from Caroline, the 6-year-old daughter of Rev. Tom Schnitzlein, the minister at St. Stephen. We felt like it was the perfect picture of how these volunteers felt about serving that day:

Friday, June 4, 2010

Impact Charlotte

We'll be welcoming friends from the UMC this weekend as part of the city-wide Impact Charlotte. Will you be there?