Rcma arcadia fl: RCMA Arcadia Child Development Center

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About RCMA

At RCMA, we make the dreams of children in migrant working and low-income families our focus. That means making sure anything that impacts their learning is taken care of. From early childhood education to health care assistance to supplying WiFi hotspots and tablets for homework, we take a holistic approach that cares for the entire child – including a helping hand for their parents.

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Emergency Preparedness

Our top priority is safety

RCMA continues to monitor emergencies like COVID-19 and hurricanes that impact the communities we serve. Our top priority is the safety of our employees and our enrolled children and their families. In all emergency situations, please follow the guidance provided by local health and emergency officials, the U.S. Centers of Disease Control and the World Health Organization.

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FACES OF CHANGE

The children who’ve brightened our centers with their eagerness to learn have gone on to even brighter futures. Here are some of their stories of transformation from working in the fields to achieving the highest levels of education. Their determination for reaching their goals no matter what is truly inspiring for us all.

Family well-being

Parents and families are supported in achieving their own goals, such as housing stability, continued education, and financial security.

Programs support and strengthen parent-child relationships and engage families around children’s learning and development.

The Kids

As newborns and toddlers at RCMA, they put smiles on teachers’ faces and are the lights of our lives. As charter school students, they inspire us with goals of becoming scientists and doctors that will go on to help combat cancer. Indeed, the children we guide have an intense drive to do great things.

RCMA helps them leverage their abilities by providing access to cutting edge technology, programs that nurture leadership skills, and most important of all, care and attention that emboldens them.

Meet Fernando Rodriguez

As a child, Fernando Rodriguez was encouraged to do well in school, but it wasn’t easy as part of a migrant working family, moving schools three times a year.

He first became part of the RCMA family at a center in Quincy, FL, and later volunteered at RCMA to earn service hours in high school.

After receiving his master’s degree in architecture, he’s now working on bigger goals – first, a doctorate, then opening an architectural firm.

His journey is truly an inspiration to us all at RCMA.

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$.90 OF EVERY DOLLAR

goes directly to support a child & parents

Your donations and volunteerism go directly to supporting children with few resources and few allies. Will you be the next ally on our mission of ensuring a bright future for these hopeful, hard-working children?

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Who We Are – RCMA

Redlands Christian Migrant Association was born in 1965, amid a litany of horrors.

RCMA was founded in 1965 by people concerned about the children spending all day in South Florida’s vegetable fields with their migrant-working parents. They saw the harsh and sometimes deadly environments these children had to endure and knew they couldn’t sit idly by. These brave and selfless early members of RCMA took action and created a safe haven – two child-care centers located at Homestead’s Redlands labor camp.

Next, they discovered hiring mothers from the fields made it far easier for families to reach out for help. So they trained them to become professional child care providers, giving these newly minted child-care workers a new chance at long-lost educations of their own. Farmworkers – often exploited and exhausted – brought their babies to RCMA and encountered staff who had experienced the same struggles in life. RCMA had developed a more holistic approach for improving children’s lives by improving the lives of their families. As a result of these innovative and passionate efforts, childcare centers began filling to capacity.

RCMA operates 66 child care centers, 19 partner family child care homes, two charter schools, and several afterschool programs in 21 Florida counties, serving nearly 6,500+ children every year.  RCMA truly embodies the values of honesty, respect, love of self, and caring for our neighbors and community.

Over the years, RCMA has broadened the range of its programs. Many of our centers accept infants as young as six weeks. Our after-school programs serve children ages 5 to 11.

In 2000, we opened charter schools in Immokalee, southeast of Fort Myers, and Wimauma, south of Tampa. In 2012, we added a charter middle school on the Wimauma campus. Together, the two Wimauma schools serve grades K-8. The Immokalee school serves grades K-6.

Despite all the changes made over more than five decades, Wendell Rollason’s personal mission of empathy still affects RCMA and the people we serve profoundly.

An early beneficiary of our mission was the late Maria Coronado, a Mexican immigrant. Coronado quit picking oranges and tomatoes in 1974 to join RCMA as a cook. Supervisors quickly noticed her leadership skills, and a 30-year career began to unfold. She eventually acquired responsibility for six childcare centers and 300 children in Homestead.

Today, the Coronado family is thoroughly integrated into American society. Maria Coronado’s children include a school principal, a retired Army captain, a business executive and an international entrepreneur in the orchid industry.

A more recent example is Lourdes Villanueva, who migrated with her parents as a teenager. She learned to pick everything, but her favorite was oranges – she loved peering into the distance from the top of the ladder she used. When Villanueva had children, she discovered RCMA and a new life. She joined RCMA as a family support worker, then earned her GED, and eventually earned her bachelor’s degree in social work. Today, Villanueva lives east of Tampa, and is RCMA’s Director of Farmworker Advocacy.