Amid growing demand, a new bilingual child care center is opening in New Castle

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Delaware is home to a diverse Latino population of over 95,000, with significant growth in New Castle driving increased demand for services, especially in child care support.

Working with Northern Delaware’s Latino community since 1969, the Latin American Community Center in Wilmington offers a range of services through its divisions in lifelong learning and life empowerment. These include early childhood programs, financial literacy, food assistance, domestic violence support, victim advocacy and case management.

“We really want to be where the community is and where the community needs [us]. It’s past time that we expand over to New Castle,” said CEO of LACC Maria Matos.

With the Latino population on the rise, LACC has encountered an uptick in demand for services aimed at improving Latino Delawareans’ quality of life and supporting first-generation Spanish-speaking children. Matos emphasizes the significance of early education, stressing that while child care is essential, educating children at a younger age is critical.

“What La Fiesta does is prepare children to enter kindergarten ready to learn, increase their vocabulary so they’re on par with their counterparts when they enter,” she said. “And make sure that children learn whatever it is that they need to learn in preschool in order to be successful in kindergarten.”

La Fiesta, LACC’s child care centers, recently celebrated La Fiesta 3’s ribbon-cutting ceremony. They aim to assist those in need of resources and support financially burdened parents.

“We strongly believe that in order to prepare children for kindergarten, they have to start early, especially with kids that do not have the resources at home to have educational gains or some of their parents may not have graduated from school,” she said. “It also provides the working poor or parents that are working the opportunity to work and afford high-quality, low-cost infant care,” she added.

Matos points out bilingualism is a key component of their services.

“Studies will tell you that when children come not knowing English, but they have a strength and the strength is their home language, if you build on that strength in … two years or two-and-a-half years, you can take that language strength and bring in or merge in or thread in the English,” she said. “Learning English is very simple, we just take the home language and make sure that we use it as an asset.”

To promote dual language proficiency, educators enforce a creative curriculum approach, incorporating a Spanish immersion program that explores themes from both Latino and African American cultures.

Leaders of the organization note the program’s success, as children demonstrate fluency in both Spanish and English by second grade, alongside remarkable improvements in their reading abilities.

“In a year’s time some children that come in with literacy below 60%, by the time they leave La Fiesta or go to the next grade level they’re at 85.95%,” Matos said. “So they captured the concepts only because we presented them in the language that they understand and when we test the children we know where the weaknesses are and that’s where we concentrate.”

Enrollment is currently open for up to 75 children at this building, spanning ages from 6 weeks to 5 years old. While education remains their primary focus, the next phase involves integrating case management and a food pantry at the location.