They got a trip to Ottawa, a pin, a handshake from Jean Chrétien and $5,000.
Three women from a pioneering rural Manitoba day care received the prime minister’s award of excellence May 14. The 10-year-old award has recognized Canada’s best teachers, but this was the first year that early childhood educators, or ECEs, were nominated.
Of the 350 names put forward, the group from the Childcare-Family Access Network was named as one of the seven winners, said the women’s boss, Jane Wilson.
“It was a good statement for the profession and for rural ECEs,” said Wilson, who nominated her staff.
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“They’re the backbone of the whole C-Fan program. They keep it together.”
The program started as a rural day care in Langruth, Man. Wilson and her board saw the need to have more rural centres offering flexible hours to farm families and started a network that now operates three day cares and three nursery schools in Manitoba communities: Plumas, McCreary, Laurier, Amaranth, Alonza and Langruth.
Award winner Tammy Gingras said the 5,200 sq. kilometre network has 200 children, three-quarters of whom are from a farm or rural area.
“I assume we won because of the rural integrated hub model we run.”
Gingras said the award was “an absolute thrill,” but humbling as well. She and her fellow winners, Rosemarie Klein and Donna Huyber, are donating the award to the program to buy playground equipment.
Huyber said she thinks their win will promote the concept of a rural day-care network and allow people to believe that it can work in the middle of Saskatchewan just as easily as in Manitoba or Ontario.
Klein, who described the win as a “mountain-top experience,” hopes it will promote early childhood educators as a profession. Provincial standards now vary, with Manitoba requiring ECEs to take a two-year course.
