More than 30 people — all donning hard hats — closed their eyes Thursday and imagined a space in which they had felt safe as a child.
The crowd was gathered in what is now a construction zone but will soon be St. Mark Early Childhood Center. St. Mark Youth Enrichment Director of Early Childhood Danielle Willis spoke to those in attendance, encouraging them to remember a place they felt free to explore and play.
“Maybe it was in a garden feeling the earth between your fingers, holding your tiny bucket and shovel, planting something for the first time and waiting with anticipation to see it grow,” she said. “Now imagine if every child had a place like that, not just in memory, but every single day. That’s what we’re building here.”
St. Mark Youth Enrichment leadership hosted a groundbreaking ceremony Thursday to celebrate the start of construction on the St. Mark Early Childhood Center, which is set to open on Sept. 1. The center will be located in the same building as Area Residential Care, 3355 Kennedy Circle, in an area currently unused by the organization.
The facility will offer early childhood care to kids aged infant through 4 years old, said St. Mark Youth Enrichment Major Gifts Coordinator Beth McGorry.
The center will initially accept 30 kids but has the capacity to expand to over 40 total in the following year, she said. The nonprofit is in the midst of a capital campaign to fund the center and has raised about $1.4 million of the $1.75 million needed, McGorry said.
The floor plan includes separate rooms for infants, 2-year-olds and for 3- to 4-year-olds, office space and an outdoor area. St. Mark Youth Enrichment leaders said at the event that the center will build on the programming it has offered school-aged children for decades.
The new child care center will utilize nature to foster strong social emotional health, curiosity and learning, Willis said. The kids will spend much of their time outdoors, and all indoor learning will still be centered around nature themes.
In a tour posted on the St. Mark Youth Enrichment website, Willis said the space is also being designed to incorporate the outdoors with features like natural paint colors, a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf that looks like a tree and a projector for streaming wildlife videos.
She said the center will use Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies’ Growing Up Wild curriculum, which uses exploration of nature as a major tool in early childhood development. Willis said studies show a strong connection with nature and spending time outdoors builds kids’ resiliency, curiosity and emotional well-being.
St. Mark Youth Enrichment Executive Director Dawn Cogan stressed the importance of connecting kids to the outdoors and said it not only helps youngsters perform better academically, but improves social-emotional skills.
“It (helps) emotional well-being, physical well-being and academic well-being. It’s the whole gamut, and that’s why nature matters so much,” Cogan said.