‘They are bilingual now,’ Spanish childcare micro-facility opens in Emporium Building

SOUTH BEND, Ind.-- It can be incredibly hard for Indiana families to find childcare; the state has less than 800 childcare centers for its 850,000 children.

A new state program is trying to help home operators scale up, and Miriam Aguilar was one of just six providers to get grant money to do so.

"This is God's purpose. This is a big dream. This is my American Dream," she said.

Aguilar started her daycare, El Pescadito, in 2004 in her home.

"And this one is full, so I open another house, until I got four," she said. "So yeah, that's the passion of my life."

Monday, she celebrated the grand opening of her first childcare center, inside the Emporium Building in South Bend's East Race neighborhood.

"It's just a charming little daycare right in the heart of downtown South Bend," said Dave Matthews, who owns the Emporium Building.

Matthews installed new bathrooms in the basement of the building to make the facility possible.

"The state made six grants available throughout the State of Indiana for one year to take some home operators and help them become center operators," Matthews said.

El Pescadito got one of those six grants, part of the Indiana micro- facility pilot program through the FSSA, and now 30 new daycare spots are online.

"Families have moved back into downtown South Bend, and there's a need for childcare," Matthew's said.

But there's more that makes this new daycare special.

"It's like immersion classes," Aguilar said. "So I speak only Spanish with the children, and they are bilingual now."

The children at El Pescadito are spoken to in Spanish.

"Yo les hablo en español porque en su casa ellos hablan inglés. Y cuando vallan a la escuela ellos van a hablar en inglés. Entonces si ellos obtienen el lenguaje en español en mi centro, ellos cuando crezcan, van a poder hacer bilingües."

(TRANSLATION: "I speak to them in Spanish because at home they speak English. And at school they are going to speak in English. So, if the kids can learn Spanish at my center, when they grow up, they will become bilingual.")

It's not a daycare just for Hispanic families, any child at El Pescadito can grow up learning two languages.

"Una persona es bilingüe, tiene más oportunidades en la vida. No solamente aquí en el estado unidos, sino en todo el mundo. Cuando eres bilingüe, tú tienes más oportunidades en cuanto trabajos, cuando tienes más conocimientos eres más exitosos."

(TRANSLATION: "When a person is bilingual, they have more opportunities in life. Not only in the United States, but the whole world. When you are bilingual, you have more opportunities for work, you have more of an understanding, you are more successful.")