For more than a century, through two pandemics, this nonprofit has helped families in need | Lifestyle

By Editor On Sep 16, 2021

DALLAS – ChildCareGroup, a nonprofit committed to providing early education and childcare to underserved communities, has been operating in Dallas since 1901.

Now in its 120th anniversary year, the organization is researching its history to see what has changed over time.

When Tori Mannes, the CEO of ChildCareGroup, first brought a copy of the original charter from 1901 to a board meeting, board member Betsy Cullum was stunned. Her great-great-grandfather’s signature caught her eye.

“She just got the paperwork and put it on the screen. And I said, ‘Oh my god. This is my great-great-grandfather. ‘”Said Cullum. “My great-great-grandfather was one of the signatories to the 1901 document that legally created the first iteration of the ChildCareGroup. Learning that really brought it home to me. “

The organization has been working with an archivist for about a year and has learned from the past that the detection worked. For the anniversary it will be celebrated virtually on Tuesday

As a former educator, Cullum herself was passionate about the work of the ChildCareGroup and served two different terms on the Board of Directors of the ChildCareGroup, one in the late 1980s and one now. She did all of this without realizing that she already had a family connection with the organization.

ChildCareGroup has helped hundreds of thousands of families throughout its history and has eight early childhood education centers. But it was originally a settlement house, an institution that provided resources and education to the community. The settlement house, called the Neighborhood House, was on the corner of Cedar Springs and McKinney Avenues. It was the first housing estate in Texas. The eight centers now include five in Dallas and three more – in Garland, Mesquite and Corsicana.

Settlement houses were part of the social service movement of the early 20th century and provided families, mostly in low-income areas, with educational opportunities and material resources. They were usually led by white middle or upper class women.

The neighborhood house mainly offered childcare and free kindergarten for women who worked in the cotton mills, and also trained teachers who lived on the second floor.

“First and foremost, the children we looked after were immigrant children from diverse backgrounds and their mothers,” Mannes said. “They were all vulnerable and had to make money for their families, so many worked in the cotton mills.”

Mannes said understanding history is important because they use it to inform their present and to make plans.

“The history of the ChildCareGroup has an enormous pervasiveness, because what we knew then, we still know today,” said Mannes. “And more importantly, we’ve put all of these decades and decades of research and experience behind us to underline why it works and that it works.”

Much has changed in 120 years, but also not much. For Mannes, one of the most interesting things she saw while researching history is that the coronavirus is ChildCareGroup’s second pandemic. During the 1918 flu pandemic, the ChildCareGroup looked after infants whose parents had contracted Spanish flu.

“We were on the front lines there looking after the children and families who need us most, and we stayed on the front lines during the COVID pandemic and did exactly the same thing,” said Mannes. “So I can’t say it was easy, but we kept going.”

Former CEO Madeline Mandell said she was impressed with the consistency of the ChildCareGroup’s mission over the past 120 years. She said the mission to support mothers in the workplace and give their children a safe, neat, and educated place has remained the same from the start.

ChildCareGroup’s focus on early childhood education and a two-generation approach that supports both parents and their children are values that have remained in the 120 years of its existence.

“That was consistent throughout and has never changed,” said Mandell.

Mandell, CEO from 1971 to 2000, also said she remembers having a sense of achievement when she learned that children who completed an education with the ChildCareGroup performed well above average.

“I remember when I got these statistics I just sat at my desk and cried because that was it, you know,” Mandell said. “That’s what I wanted to do, something that really made a difference in children’s lives.”

When she looks at the organization today, she says that she is proud of what she has achieved.

Cullum shares that view, saying that from her first tenure on the board under Mandell’s leadership to this day, she has seen people’s response to early childhood education and childcare changing.

“Back then, the majority of people really didn’t get it,” said Cullum. “Sometimes when I explained what I do to my friends I would look glassy or they would say, ‘No, no, high school, there it is.’ “

Earlier education is valued more now.

“I really feel like the public has been educated in many ways about the importance of early childhood education,” said Cullum. ”

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