Provider’s Appreciation Day

To all the caregivers in the CNMI (family care services, in-home group home care services, day care centers, and teachers in public and private schools):

Tirow Woomi and Hafa Adai!

I’d like to take a minute for all of us to think about what’s happening every morning to all the working parents.

Parents are making the preparations to get to work, and those preparations include, for most working families, putting their children in the care of others. And even before they’re out the door, they are worrying about the logistics of the care that their children will receive. Some are even worrying about the safety or quality of that care.

There are many who are wondering whether they would get better quality care if they could pay more. Others are struggling to determine how they’ll be able to afford next month’s payment. And there are many who are in the work force that worry every day about how they’ll care for their child and hold down the job that they need.

Many parents will go to work, but have trouble focusing on work because they are worried about the sniffle that their daughter had or wondering how their son is faring.

Many more working parents will keep looking nervously at the clock and will mumble into telephones the instructions that their children need after school, because their concerns don’t end at the end of the day for their children’s school time, because parents won’t get home, so they have to worry about what happens to keep their child safe and well occupied during those hours as well.

Provider’s Appreciation Day is a special day to recognize the importance and hard work of the world’s unsung heroes—our childcare providers, teachers, and educators of young children everywhere. Recognized each year on the Friday before Mother’s Day in the United States, I am very happy and proud that today will mark the first time that our childcare providers will be recognized in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.

I would also like to recognize and extend my deepest appreciation to Ms. Pat Coleman of NMC-CREES and her wonderful staff, Mrs. Joan T. Aquino, director of Little Darling Day Care Center, Ms. Cathy Anderson and Mrs. Bertha R. Recheked of DCCA.

Thank you and may God bless you all.

Virginia N. Mahora
Social Worker IV
Child Care Licensing Program/DCCA