The children of our neighborhood have been part of our life ever since Sojourners Fellowship came to Washington, D.C., in August, 1975. Many of our first friends in the city were children. Having arrived in D.C. with two children of my own, ages 10 weeks and 12 months, I spent much of my time with them, while observing and meeting other mothers in the neighborhood.
As our fellowship's involvement in the neighborhood grew, and some members began tutoring older children who were failing in school, I wondered about the preparation these children had received prior to kindergarten. And through relationships with other parents, we gradually realized the problem of finding affordable childcare in the area. In an attempt to respond to this need, we began a small pilot childcare program in one of our households in the fall of 1976.
The eight children in the program included my two children, three preschoolers from a family who were living with us temporarily after having been evicted from their apartment, and three children who lived in a boarding house down the street. Through the struggles and successes of that small program, we as a community began to be actively involved in the issue of childcare for our neighbors.
Then in the fall of 1977, with very limited resources, Sojourners Daycare Center opened in the basement of Clifton Terrace Apartments, a low-income housing complex in our Columbia Heights neighborhood. The space in which the center is located once housed a government-run center, but due to mismanagement of funds the center was forced to close, and the space had remained empty for more than three years.
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