Rayitos de Sol Childcare Center opens to provide bilingual, affordable childcare for local families

We are excited to announce that on January 19, 2021 Mano en Mano opened the Rayitos de Sol (“Little Sunbeams'' in English) Bilingual Child Care Center for children in the Downeast area. Our core mission is to provide bilingual Spanish and English child care services centering the languages and cultures of the students we serve. Rayitos de Sol is open to all families in the Downeast community. We hope the center will act as a bridge connecting families from different backgrounds so that language and culture are valued and appreciated by our whole community. 

Right now, the center is operating out of the Mano en Mano office as we wait to move to a new, expanded location in the area sometime later this year. We currently have five toddler and preschool aged students regularly attending Rayitos de Sol, but we can still accept up to seven more students! If you are interested in having your toddler or preschooler attend Rayitos de Sol, please contact us at 207-598-9167 or rayitos@manomaine.org. 

So far, students have been focusing on acclimating to the space (and operating within COVID-19 health and safety precautions) as well as getting to know and respect each other and the teachers. In addition to grounding the childcare in the Spanish language and latino cultures, teachers focus on educating students through music and movement. 

Later, we plan to expand Rayitos de Sol to a new local location and also to offer services for infants as well as older children through an after school program. Not only are we excited to be able to invest in young children, we are happy to have been able to hire and train local community members as bilingual educators. 

We are so excited to be able to offer much needed affordable child care services for families in our community, and, importantly, to be able to emphasize and celebrate language with young children who otherwise might lose their Spanish or only ever speak English. 

Children of working parents can spend up to half of their waking hours in child care. When a child's first language is something other than English, monolingual childcare can mean missed opportunities to practice and learn their native language – a vital loss of connection to family and culture. 

Please stay tuned for more updates from Rayitos de Sol in the months to come! In the meantime, please help us continue to offer this vital service at an affordable rate for working parents by donating here. As we continue to build Rayitos de Sol, donations will also help us to grow our bilingual library for young children and offer additional resources celebrating our cultures, languages and communities