Utilizing practical and effective solutions to facilitate the personal and professional growth of childcare providers and their affiliated community partners is one part of a key mission at Providers Need Care (PNC).
The non-profit organization wants to empower and uplift underserved communities in Riverside and San Bernardino Counties. Thanks to a recent grant from Inland Empire Community Foundation (IECF) through its CIELO Fund, PNC can increase and equalize access to high-quality childcare services for minority populations.
“Considering the decrease in funding to nonprofits over the last year, this grant is a miracle, and we are more than grateful,” said Yvonne Choyce, CEO and founder of PNC. “This funding represents an opportunity to continue investing in our children, families, and our communities. The support has allowed us to grow participation in our programs over the last year, leading to a successful increase in the Latino providers and the business owners.”
“That, in turn, strengthens their sustainability and ability to expand access to their much-needed childcare issues within their own communities,” she added. “And I think that’s an important impact, and it’s especially meaningful right now.”
She references the great challenges Spanish-speaking families and providers have and continue to face in light of funding losses and other barriers in recent years.
“This is a major investment in childcare, and it changes lives,” Choyce shared.
For starters, it allows parents to work with children so they can thrive in communities and make those communities grow. Grants like those distributed through IECF continue to help address the childcare shortage in the region, but also help create greater access and opportunities for working families.
“It’s a huge impact,” Choyce said, who founded the organization three years ago.
It’s also interesting to note Choyce’s deep commitment to the region as she’s at the helm of another key nonprofit in the region, Little Seeds Matter, which strives to empower families with young children in under-resourced communities throughout Riverside and San Bernardino counties.
When asked why this work—in a way, her personal mission to make a difference—is so important to her, Choyce was candid.
“First of all, I did childcare in my home for more than 20 years,” she said. “And I got called back into this environment by the Women’s Business Center four years ago. They asked me to train providers based on the grant that they had, and these were startups. In the middle of that second cohort, I started hearing a lot and saw a lot of red flags. I began looking at these women who I was training—women who wanted to take care of children—but they themselves needed help.”
She noted that many of the woman we’re coming out of the pandemic and great losses—from jobs and familial shifts to other home issues.
“A lot of them were starting a business just because they needed to start over,” Choyce said. “I didn’t feel right training them to take care of Little Johnny in the state that they were in. I had this overwhelming feeling that I need to do more than just train them on how to get a license, and it just came to me that… ‘providers need care.’”
She formed PNC shortly after that revelation and the nonprofit has been thriving ever since. To be sure, Choyce has also been working perhaps the hardest she ever has in her life.
“I love it though, and our biggest push is self-care,” she said. “We do a lot of self-care training because of all the challenges. We hold an annual retreat every year for our providers so that they can stop and allow us to take care of them for the day. That’s really important to me.”
Fortunately, she’s been able to maintain the same facilitators for three years. In the beginning, she didn’t have much to pay them at all.
“I just started recruiting the facilitators from within the industry,” Choyce said, “and in that first year, I was like, ‘there is not going to be any money’—I just need you to buy into this dream. And they did.”
Moving forward, Choyce says the nonprofit will continue to enhance its comprehensive training, business counseling, resource sharing, compliance assistance, and personal care services.
“We want to equip providers with all the right tools and knowledge they need for success,” she stressed.
This story originally appeared in the Press Enterprise, June 2026.
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