HANA Celebrates Last Early Childhood Center Graduation

Since 1979, HANA Center’s Early Childhood Center (ECC) has made early learning and childcare accessible to our local immigrant community and helped to raise generations of empowered young people. Recently, HANA’s ECC held its last graduation and commemorated ECC’s founding vision and achievements over the past several decades.

Due to recent funding structural changes made by the Office of Head Start and the City of Chicago, HANA had to make the extremely difficult decision to close our ECC at the end of September 2021. Unfortunately, HANA’s ECC lost a significant amount of funding, making the center’s operations unsustainable going forward. We have partnered with several local childcare centers to ensure all our families have a transition plan and access to continued Head Start slots, and to support our ECC staff with transitioning smoothly into new jobs.

HANA’s ECC began in 1979 in the basement of a church with 2 classes and 40 students, providing care for the children of Korean immigrant families with two working parents. Founded by HANA’s predecessor organization, Korean American Community Services (KACS), ECC was the first and only childcare facility launched by a Korean community non-profit organization in the Chicago area. 

ECC grew from two classes to four, serving both toddlers and pre-schoolers, and added an after-school program for children from kindergarten to 6th grade. It similarly grew to serve more diverse local residents, including Latinx and multiethnic immigrant families, as the Korean population spread to the suburbs. More than 2,000 children are estimated to have gone through HANA’s ECC in the past 42 years. 

Christy Aliposa, ECC’s Parent Policy Committee Chair, shared:

“Both of my children were enrolled at HANA’s Early Childhood Center. All the teachers and staff are really dedicated, and I have appreciated the opportunity to grow my leadership and understanding of the early childhood landscape in my role as our Parent Policy Committee Chair. The center has been a strong support to our family. We will really miss everyone.”

HANA’s Executive Director Inhe Choi stated,

“We extend our deepest gratitude to the children and families who have grown with us, our wonderful ECC staff, and the greater HANA community for supporting our Early Childhood Center throughout the past several decades. Although the center is closing, we know that its legacy will live on in the strong young leaders who spent their early years learning and growing at HANA Center.” 

Over the past 42 years, ECC has served as an essential resource for immigrant families to realize their dreams by providing an educational approach to understanding social and emotional well-being in multicultural families, and an educational curriculum that cultivates an awareness of social justice. Thank you to everyone who has been a part of HANA’s ECC family.

We're currently collecting stories and photos about the impact of ECC over the years, and would love to hear from you. Please click the button below to share your story or photo. Stories will be compiled into a commemorative online book that will be posted on HANA's website.