HELP US SPREAD THE WORD!
The Bay Area Childcare Collective (BACC) is looking for new core organizers 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, while supporting local grassroots organizing.
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.
We’re excited to welcome new core members to participate in:
- facilitating politicized games & activities & providing care for fabulous kids of all ages
- recruiting, training, and supporting collective members
- building and maintaining relationships with partner groups
- day-to-day collective operations
- bringing your creative wisdom to our collective endeavors
The time requirement is in the range of 10-20 hours per month, depending on how many projects you decide to take on.
Interested? Come to our “So You’re Interested in Joining the BACC Core?” shindig on Sunday, September 28th from 5-7 pm. Food, fun and information will be provided. Location TBA (East bay, BART accessible). RSVP to bayareachildcarecollective@gmail.com. Let us know your dietary restrictions and access needs, including childcare. If you can’t make it but are interested, drop us a line anyway and we’ll follow up with you. Current collective members are encouraged to attend as well as folks new to the collective!
>>Read on to learn more about our history, current core members, and expansion process!<<
About Our History and Current Core Members:
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.
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 Our Expansion Process
In the past, when we had larger cores of 5-7 people, we were able to not only support our partner groups more fully but also develop special projects like our Radical Coloring Book and Transformative Justice & Childcare Practice workshop and zine. We are currently hoping to grow the core back to that size.
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. And, we also recognize that because we serve largely Spanish-speaking low-income communities of color in our work, having a majority white member base and an all white leadership team limits our capacity to offer culturally appropriate curriculum for the communities we serve. Because we want to see BACC grow in this capacity, we are prioritizing Spanish-speaking people, low-income people, people of color, parents and/or older generations in our search for comprehensive leadership.
Where We’re Headed
Rachel and Encian are learning as we go in this transition process and don’t have a set agenda for what will come out of it. More than anything, we are excited about supporting the sustainability of BACC in whatever form it takes.
Again, if interested come to our “So You’re Interested in Joining the BACC Core?” shindig, Sunday, September 28th from 5-7 pm. Location TBA (East bay, BART accessible). RSVP to bayareachildcarecollective@gmail.com. Let us know your dietary restrictions and access needs, including childcare. If you can’t make it but are interested, drop us a line anyway and we’ll follow up with you.
In community,
The Bay Area Childcare Collective Core
