A small church in rural Michigan has turned an old school into a child care center so parents can get back to work while their kids are in its care, MLive.com reports.
According to the Detroit Free Press, there are only a handful of child care centers licensed to care for Northeast Michigan's 3,000 children under the age of 5.
Much of the region is a "child care desert," with three or more children competing for every slot.
"It's a lot thicker than I was thinking," the pastor of St. Paul Lutheran Church tells MLive.com. After two years of hard work, the church was awarded $15,000 from Michigan's Our Strong Start program to open Small Wonders Academy.
The program offers help getting licensed and securing startup grants for child care centers.
St. Paul's director of child care, Debbie Choe, tells the Free Press that the church turned an old school into a child care center so parents can get back to work while their kids are in its care.
"We don't even care about that," the pastor says. "We just want to meet a basic need our families in our communities are facing."
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