This year marks five years since the first Raised in Bristol nursery opened at Easton Community Centre so we’re re taking the opportunity to celebrate!

It’s been a chance to look back – we’re super proud of everything we have achieved. Going into 2023 we now have four Raised In nurseries – and counting…

In the past five years we’ve….

We set up Raised In because we wanted to find ways to help communities thrive and prosper in challenging times – and the last five years have been unexpectedly challenging! Our purpose is – to provide families with the highest quality early years education whilst sustaining our community partners with long-term support.

What birthday would be complete without cake?! The fabulous Parsnips’ Cupcakes baked us five spectacular cakes for our wonderful team to enjoy earlier this month.

One of the cakes and Jamie-lea and Soa from Easton enjoying it!

We chatted with Co-founders Sasha Lines and Anne Malindine about the journey over the last five years and what the future holds for Raised In...

The first Raised in Bristol nursery at Easton Community Centre turns five this year! You must be so proud of all that RiB and the team has achieved in that time.

What was it like at the very beginning?

Sasha: When we first started, the 'HQ' office was where the baby room sleep area is at Easton, and the staff kitchen and staff room were where the baby nappy changing area is. We didn't have the current staff room, it was occupied by another company. Me, Anne, Kirsten and Natalie worked from there, Natalie started on 12 hours per week. We opened with 2 full time children in January 2018 and Nicola and Rosie as our only other employees. We didn't have a booking system, we just used a spreadsheet!

Getting stuck in cleaning up the garden!

What are your favourite memories from the last five years?

Sasha: Seeing the new children start as babies through to them leaving to go to school. Many of them stay with us for the duration, they often welcome siblings too. It’s a real joy to see them learn and grow to the next stage of life.

Anne: For me, it’s the events that stand out - coffee mornings and do you remember bonfire nights in the courtyard? It’s the thank you parties when we opened another nursery; it’s Christmas parties – from a very small one in our house in 2017 to the really big one at the Mount Without a couple of weeks ago – and everything in between.

The 2018 RiB team Christmas party at Old Market Assembly.

What are some of the challenges you’ve faced?

Sasha: such fast growth, is exciting but also very challenging, pop a pandemic in the middle too and …!

Also, not being taken seriously in an undervalued and underfunded industry whilst Striving to change the language and culture around early years education

Talking about making a profit. Profit is not a dirty word, it’s what you do with the profit that matters.

Anne: Luckily we both love a challenge and so do the people working with us. Covid chaos of course! Finding suitable places and partners to work with; developing and defining RiB’s business model; Keeping moving…

What has been RiB’s biggest achievement/success?

Anne: Getting started at all! And proving that our idea works…

Never paying anyone less than the Real living Wage – a commitment that is vanishingly rare in the early years sector.

Saving three community buildings to remain in public ownership and use because they have a guaranteed rental income from us. Without the support of parents for the nurseries, the local authority would not have given our partner organisations a lease to run the buildings and be our landlords.

Discovering and maintaining great working relationships with families, with the whole RiB team (now over 100 employees), with excellent advisors and with non-exec directors and investors – plus so many other champions of RiB. I often feel amazed by the generosity and goodwill we’ve met and enjoyed.

What does the future have in store for RiB?

Anne: Lots of ideas and plans… RiB will continue to grow as a ‘cluster’ of nurseries as new opportunities arise.

The Raised IN business will grow to include new clusters elsewhere – next up is Cornwall where we’ve been invited to partner with The Ladder in Redruth.

We’ll continue our ambition to be an employer of choice and to champion the career development of every employee as well as speaking up for greater recognition of the vital part played by the sector in the future of our society.

Sasha:

Developing the model and growing into more communities, raising awareness of the social enterprise model.