The Carroll County Childrens Garden organizers bound together with members of the community on Friday afternoon to celebrate the groundbreaking of the Childrens Garden Early Childhood Center located at 801 W. Columbia St. in Flora meant to provide a play-based center for children to grow into their full potential.
The Childrens Garden Childcare Center in Carroll County celebrated its groundbreaking for the center on Friday, which will hold 85 seats for children across Carroll County. The project aims to combat Carroll County’s ranking of 91 out of 92 counties in terms of childcare accessibility after a successful program launched by the Flora First Christian Church set the stage for its introduction.
Carroll County Economic Development Director Jacob Adams stated that the project is a culmination of community efforts to better address the need for childcare within the community, and he expressed his gratitude to the Carroll County and Flora leaders who brought the Childrens Garden to fruition.
“This has been a really large partnership with the community, the town, philanthropic, higher education, engagement,” Adams said. “We’ve all centered ourselves on a common goal.”
Flora First Christian Church Pastor Tom Helvie stated that the Flora Christian Church sponsored the First Step Preschool for approximately 10 years before the Childrens Garden was brought to fruition. The church provided places for around 35 nursery and preschool children, but the church saw that the program would host a larger need than the facility was able to provide from the beginning.
The church entertained talks of the Childrens Garden center in 2018 as the members of the church sought to grow the services provided, and 2022 saw the formation of a task force to kickstart the process of establishing a non-profit early learning center to expand the childcare opportunities in Carroll County.
“Flora Christian Church has long had a vision of supporting children and encouraging their development,” Helvie said. “Children are our future and our legacy, and it’s our responsibility to provide a safe environment to teach, nurture and to love them.”
Childrens Garden Director Samantha Miller stated that the main goal of the center resides within the need to aid the children of Carroll County with their journeys to grow and develop into successful adults inside and outside of the county lines.
“We really wanted to emphasize our devotion to growing children, growing their minds, growing their bodies and making them into people that we have in our community that are making our community better,” Miller said. “That’s kind of where that Children Garden name came from.”
Miller continued to state that the Childrens Garden programming will center around the idea that play acts as an integral aspect of childhood development and learning.
“We know that play is the most important thing for kids in their development and in their growth, so it will be a very play-focused early learning center with all the most important things that we know that help children grow and develop in their earliest and most formative years,” Miller said. “We’re really excited to have this going on.”
Flora Town Council President Darrell Yoder commented about the town’s continued support for the project and the developments of youth that the center will provide for those in Flora and across Carroll County.
“We are really excited as a town to have the Childrens Garden become a part of our community,” Yoder said. “There’s a tremendous need for this type of thing for our community, our county and really throughout the state of Indiana.”
Managing Director, College and Community Collaboration Initiative with the Purdue Center for Regional Development, Melinda Grismer commented that the college and community collaboration initiative stood proud during the groundbreaking as the Childrens Garden became the first of five local childcare centers the organization sought to invest in across Indiana.
“This day is many years in the making as many good community economic development efforts are,” Grismer said. “It took a lot of ideas, a lot of partners, and not just the first idea, but many iterations of that idea. Sometimes it takes longer than we want it to, but that’s really important to get everyone on board, and I feel like this is one of those efforts. There’s a lot to celebrate here.”
Grismer commented that the initiative remains focused on childcare and transportation, and the team has expressed their pride with marking Children Gardens as the first project in the effort to provide further childcare opportunities in the state.
Adams concluded the groundbreaking by stating that the Carroll County Economic Development Corporation has earmarked a $500,000 match for the project with intentions to aid in the funding of outstanding staff members and programs expected to be provided by the center.
“What you will see over the next year is we’ll be working with the Indiana Economic Development Corporation to take the $500,000 commitment that we received from Purdue and Lilly and match that dollar for dollar for this project,” Adams said. “What we’re really trying to do is give the Childrens Garden an opportunity to succeed.”
The organization will host three separate programs, such as the Infants and Toddlers Program, the Preschool Program and the Pre-Kindergarten Program. The Infants and toddlers Program will be open to infants and toddlers between the ages of six weeks and three years. The Preschool Program will be open to children ages three years to five years with opportunities for the children to learn from their peers and become role models for others while learning pre-school skills. The Pre-Kindergarten Program will be available for children who are five-years-old who seek a school-like and academic preparation program prior to Kindergarten.
