For years, Okanagan College instructor Lloyd Davies watched his students’ studies suffer when they couldn’t find child care.
So he and his wife made a major financial donation to help create a daycare at the Vernon, B.C. campus.
“In the 15 years I was working here at Okanagan College I always had students come to me sometime during the semester saying, ‘I am sorry I can’t get that assignment done, I can’t get the labs, I can’t finish my final exam because I’ve got child care problems.’ It was an ongoing issue that just wasn’t being solved,” said Davies.
Okanagan College Foundation executive director Helen Jackman said Davies’ donation helped get the project started by allowing the college to leverage provincial funding for creating new child care spaces.
After Davies’ gift and provincial funding another $750,000 needs to be raised for the $2.75 million project.
Now, daycare construction is underway and so is fundraising.
“If we are fortunate and get all the money together, the child care centre is actually slated to open in September 2024. We’ve already had students reaching out to us to say, ‘Can we get on to the wait list?’ So we know that for them it is going to make a huge impact,” said Jackman.
Jackman said access to child care can be a big factor in student parents’ success at school.
‘The stats tell us that student parents that have access to daycare are actually three times more likely to graduate. Then they are going to go on to fill incredible jobs in the community so it is something that is really going to have a huge impact here on the campus,” Jackman said.
The daycare is expected to have 44 spaces and is part of a larger on-campus construction project that will also include student housing.
A fundraising event for the daycare project on Wednesday raised over $41,000.
Okanagan College already offers daycare at its Kelowna and Penticton campuses but this will be the first time daycare is offered at the Vernon campus.