104-space daycare centre will open in Kleefeld

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This article was published 06/08/2023 (641 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A daycare centre is set to open in Kleefeld that will not only service that municipality but potentially the municipalities of Mitchell, Grunthal, and Niverville.

“There are no licensed centres in Kleefeld. There are a number of home daycares including one licensed home daycare but no centres. The nearest is Grunthal. We have over 200 kids on our waiting list already,” said Rebecca Guderian, chair of the future Happy Hive Childcare Centre.

During its regular council meeting on July 26, the RM said the daycare is currently slotted for 104 spaces. Guderian wouldn’t confirm the 104 spaces as the province asked the daycare and RM to wait before announcing how many spaces the daycare will have until after the province made its announcement. Coun. Darrin Warkentin wouldn’t comment on the project citing the province’s request.

The centre is important to Kleefeld, according to Guderian, because there was no commercial space that was appropriate to meet the needs of a daycare in the municipality.

To build from scratch would have required fundraising or a mortgage as the going rate for commercial space in Kleefeld is about $15 to $17 per sq.ft. Instead, the daycare is being built under the provincial and federal Ready to Move Child Care project, which pays for daycares to be opened in rural areas or on reserves. Happy Hive will not pay rent for 15 years after which it will enter into a lease agreement with the RM of Hanover, which owns the building and the land.

“We’ll be able to have enough funding to not be too worried about finances. A lot of times daycares are just break even or not quite breaking even so this will put the community in a good position to have this daycare succeed,” said Guderian.

As of July 2023, Manitoba has provided a total investment of $120 million from both the governments of Canada and Manitoba for two phases of the Ready to Move Child Care project to create 1,970 new child care spaces in 25 rural and Indigenous communities.

Under the agreement, Manitoba is targeting the development of 23,000 new full time child care spaces by March 31, 2026, and capital grant funding is allocated to support the creation of 5,890 new child care spaces.

The daycare will be around 9,000 sq.ft. and will charge $10 a day for infant and preschool age children and $20 a day for school age children. Its hours are yet to be determined and are dependent on staffing. Guderian estimated to be fully staffed there needed to be about 18 to 20 employees.

It will be located on Park Avenue between the Kleefeld Recreation Centre and the park structure. It is set to open in spring of 2024.