Uwimana, Wonderschool partner and Director of Union City Wonderschool, was able to achieve her goal of owning her own home by following the advice of Wonderschool and partnering with Landed (www.landed.com), a startup that offers down payment assistance to educators in exchange for 25% of the home's gain (or loss).
Today on the blog, Uwimana shares her inspiring story with us.
I ran my family child care business for two years before partnering with Wonderschool. At the time, I was struggling with business overwhelm and encroaching burnout. The non-teaching parts of running my business made my head spin. I had been trying to manage parent concerns and payments during the school day, even at pickup time, and work was bleeding into the weekends: I had parents texting me on the weekends asking me to measure cribs or do this or that...It was a lot.
Family child care management is a huge undertaking and as I re-evaluated my business, I realized I wasn't interested in being so stressed out and having to work on the weekends all the time again. When I learned about how Wonderschool takes care of the backend of the business, they had my ear.
I've been working with Wonderschool for about 5 months now. They've been so helpful in terms of marketing my program to parents, handling administrative tasks, and just staying organized in general. This time around, I have support and don't feel isolated.
You're by yourself with family child care. That's just the cold truth of it. And having Wonderschool as a resource is really important. They have so much experience between all the people Chris has on his team.
Best of all, I've been able to reach one of my major goals with the advice and support from Wonderschool: I was able to buy a house!
During one of our conversations, Rebecca Grubman, the Head of Partnerships at Wonderschool, asked me, "What are some of your goals?"
I told her I really want to own my own home and, eventually, open my own child care center.
It felt crazy and impossible. We were in no financial position to buy a house. But Rebecca said, "Well, you can have that." I thought to myself, Okay right. I thought she was just telling me what I want to hear. I asked her what she meant, and that's when she told me about Landed. They partner with educators to give them a down payment on a home.
We reached out to Landed and they were super user-friendly. It was so easy, I felt like I must be missing something! But no, it's actually that seamless. They interviewed us, checked out the property and neighborhood, and sent us some documents to look over and sign.
Landed provides up to half of an educator’s down payment in exchange for sharing in 25% of the appreciation (or depreciation) in value when the home is sold or refinanced. . It's an investment, not a loan - there are no monthly payments on the support.
We wouldn't have been able to get the home if it weren't for Landed. I couldn't have asked for a better experience. We were just really blessed in the whole process.
There's a certain sense of confidence when you're providing something out of your home when you own it versus when you don't. And I do feel more confident to grow and to think bigger, or to just be more grounded in what I'm offering now that we own our home. I'm taking myself and this business with Wonderschool a lot more seriously.
This experience of being able to buy our home has shown me how you can achieve your business goals -- sometimes the ones you never even imagined were possible. Even if Wonderschool doesn't have all the answers all the time, they work with their partners to support us in any way they can, like by connecting us with organizations like Landed.
Wonderschool has also been amazing in helping me define my goals and putting together actionable steps to work towards them.
The next goal I'm working towards right now is expanding from a "small" family child care to a "large" one. Then within the next 5 years or so, I hope to be able to further expand into a child care center, with employees and everything.
And I plan to have Wonderschool by my side through it all.
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