NEWS

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The Davidson-Cornelius Child Development Center (DCCDC) was founded in 1969 in response to a tragic fire that claimed the lives of three young children from Davidson. Their mother had no access to childcare and left her children at home while she worked as a maid to support her family. In response to this tragedy, local citizens, businesses, faith organizations, and Davidson College staff united to create a unique community center to serve families of all income levels and backgrounds. Since its inception, the child development center has served over 3,000 children from the surrounding community. The center is located in the heart of Davidson and the children reflect the heart and varied circumstances of its nearby neighborhoods.

On March 16, for the first time in over fifty years, the DCCDC temporarily closed its doors due to the COVID-19 pandemic. That said, like our origin story, we rose to meet the needs of our community during a difficult time. Through the beginning stages of COVID-19, the DCCDC stayed grounded in its mission to provide high-quality, affordable early care and education to any child of our community, while embracing and fostering diversity in a safe learning environment. Dedication to our mission fueled creative ways to provide for our community’s children, as well as our staff.

Since closure, the DCCDC has provided over 1,500 ready-made nutritious meals, private in-home childcare for parents so they could remain in the workforce, direct financial support of monthly bills to lower income families, weekly virtual learning, and consistent communication with all families. The DCCDC has partnered with DCCDC parents, agencies, foundations, corporations, and local supporters to ensure continuity of as many services as possible.

The DCCDC received an overwhelming outpouring of community support to ensure all sixty-four of our children, their families, and the DCCDC staff were not negatively impacted by the center’s closure. Current DCCDC parents were the first to spring into action by donating their tuition payments to ensure that the DCCDC’s staff continued to receive full pay. Many of those same parents went even further to provide in-home childcare to other families who could not afford childcare but would be severely impacted through loss of income, if they could not go to work. Additionally, parents donated funding to ensure families who were food insecure had meals during closure.

Additionally, partners such as Bank of America, the Davidson Community Foundation, the Peninsula Community Foundation, Renate, Hans, the Maria Hofmann Trust, and The Pines Residents were instrumental in providing support to ensure the DCCDC families, staff, and children were not substantially impacted by the temporary closure. The center is terrifically grateful for the support of our partners.

DCCDC is proud to announce that on June 15, 2020 our doors will be open to serve the community again. We look forward to creating a culture of new normalcy with our children, so that they can continue to learn, grow, and thrive. In the meantime, please enjoy a few pictures of our very own Chef Betsy preparing meals for families.