Parents living on the West Side of Chicago have a new pre-kindergarten education option for their children.
It Takes a Village held a ribbon cutting Oct. 12 to celebrate the early learning center opening in Austin.
At 5719 W. Chicago Ave., locals and public officials gathered to mark the official launch of the center in the West Side neighborhood.
The Austin location of It Takes a Village, founded in 2004, is the organization’s fifth and will expand the organization’s reach to children ages birth through 5 years old.
“We wanted to create a program that was truly culturally sensitive, culturally responsive, and also culturally empowering, and we wanted to implement a curriculum that did all of that,” Nakisha Hobbs, co-founder of It Takes a Village, told the Austin Weekly News earlier this year about her original goal for the organization.
It Takes a Village offers opportunities for the likes of art, music and Spanish language immersion. The organization also trains educators and provides workforce development at its headquarters and office space in the Tri-Taylor neighborhood of Chicago.
Hobbs co-founded It Takes a Village in the early 2000s, when she was pregnant, living in Austin, and looking for an early childhood education program for her baby.
Hobbs’ friend Anita Andrews-Hutchinson and her mother, Gwendolyn Harris, helped found It Takes a Village. Harris – who had taught at a Chicago Public School middle school and at Nash Elementary School in Austin – saw children struggling to read, which she taught her children before kindergarten, according to Hobbs.
“What we really want to do as an organization is improve both health and academic outcomes for children in the Austin community,” Hobbs previously told Austin Weekly News. “We want Austin to become the best place in the city of Chicago to raise children.”
It Takes a Village serves over 1,500 children across Chicago. But with plans to open a kindergarten-through-12th-grade learning center in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood – and open another birth-to-five center in Oak Park – the organization plans to serve closer to 5,000 kids in five years.
“We’ve raised some really amazing children who are not only amazing academically, but they are also folks who are committed to their communities,” Hobbs said. They are people “who have been involved in a number of campaigns over the years that are designed around enhancing or improving the quality of life for all Chicago residents, but definitely for residents on the South and West Sides of the city.”
To enroll at a It Takes a Village center, visit https://itavschools.org/resources/enroll/.