About Our Expansion Process
The Bay Area Childcare Collective (BACC) has traditionally been a primarily-white solidarity organization. Over the years, we have come to realize that childcare activism is not only support work but is central to our movements and as such should also center the leadership of people of color and others who are impacted by multiple oppressions. Additionally, we’ve come to realize that volunteering with BACC itself is a point of access, as it has led many of us to avenues of fulfilling employment and skill building. Furthermore, our partner groups are working to build black & brown power in unity in the Bay. To meaningfully include children in this work, and offer culturally appropriate curriculum, we believe it is critical to have black & brown childcare providers.
We are looking for new collective members (less time commitment) and core organizers (more time commitment).
About Our History
Since 2002, BACC has provided free childcare to foster the inclusion of families in liberation movements. We partner with groups that:
- are building community power and fighting for more than reform
- center the membership and promote the leadership of m/others (mothers & other caregivers) who experience multiple oppressions
- are low-resourced
Our current long-term partners are Causa Justa :: Just Cause, POWER (People Organized to Win Employment Rights), La Colectiva de Mujeres, and LeftRoots. We also work with other groups on a case by case basis as capacity allows.
BACC was founded in 2002 by participants of the Challenging White Supremacy workshop series (a precursor to Catalyst Project’s Anne Braden Program). As such, we began as a primarily white solidarity organization founded to support people of color led racial justice organizations. While we continue to center organizations composed of and led by m/others of color and low-income m/others, our own constituency and model has grown from its original foundation.
About Our Current Core Members
The BACC Core (core organizers of the broader collective) is currently down to three (awesome) people, one of whom recently had a baby! While we’re very excited to welcome in a new baby, this means we’ll be temporarily functioning as a group of two. Here’s who we are:
Encian joined BACC in 2008. He had just moved to the Bay Area from the Northeast, where he had had some very special kids in his life. As a transplant with race and class privilege, he felt it was particularly important to support local anti-displacement efforts, while also laying down roots and preparing to stay in the Bay for the long-haul. Encian soon fell in love with working with kids, so much so that he left the nonprofit industrial complex in 2012 to pursue becoming a preschool teacher. He is now happily teaching at a parent-teacher cooperative in Berkeley, and continuing to study early childhood education with the excellent teachers at Contra Costa Community College as well as mentors. Encian is particularly fascinated by children’s fantasy play and the use of storytelling as a method of empowerment and liberation in and out of the classroom. He feels utterly honored and humbled by the caregivers who have trusted him with their babies over the years, and the young people who have opened up and shared their perspectives, imagination and wisdom.
Rachel is a white queer Jewish woman who grew up in the Bay Area and joined BACC soon after returning to the area in 2012. Having grown up very much a part of an intergenerational community and experienced empowering community spaces from a young age, Rachel was excited to help support and prioritize such communities within liberatory movements. This, in combination with a commitment to supporting local grassroots racial justice organizing, led Rachel to BACC. Rachel was and continues to be deeply moved by participating in movements that center the organizing of m/others of color and prioritize families and children as central to movements for all of our liberation. Rachel loves getting to play ‘as one of the kids’ and is continuously inspired and rejuvenated by time spent playing and in conversation with the kids of BACC–from learning about young people’s experiences of gentrification to receiving reminders that “grown-ups can choose to play too.” The connections Rachel has built with kids and parents within BACC are central to her local organizing and continually inspire and motivate her to build and play our way into a new world.
About Who We’re Looking For
The Bay Area Childcare Collective (BACC) is looking for new members to help us build our collective and support local grassroots economic, racial and environmental justice groups. This is a great opportunity to build your childcare and leadership skills (and resumes), while supporting local grassroots organizing.
We are especially looking for folks who reflect the communities of the parents and children we work with, who are primarily African American and Latin@. We’re also looking for new members who have the following:
- Spanish language skills
- experience working with kids
- intersectional anti-oppression lens
- committment to grassroots movement-building.
To Get Involved
Come to our next orientation on Sunday October 26th, 6-8pm (location TBD, BART accessible or rides will be provided). To RSVP, send us an email at bayareachildcarecollecive@gmail.com. If you can’t make it and/or have questions and/or the time has passed, please email us.
In community,
The Bay Area Childcare Collective Core
