An Oak Park mom wants to build a village around parents and children, meeting one of the biggest challenges families have to navigate: reliable transportation.
Krystle Gaylord, a single mom, said she knew firsthand the struggle of finding reliable transportation for her children — so much so that it affected her job.
“It affected my job to the point where I lost it,” Gaylord said. “It was even more difficult to find another.”
Navigating life as a newly single mother of four children, Gaylord said she struggled making it to daycare drop off and pickup times, school dismissals and extracurriculars.
She said she knew she was probably not the only parent going through these situations and she wanted to be the one to fill in that need.
“I don’t know a parent that doesn’t struggle to make it to daycare pickup by 5 p.m.,” she said.
And she’s not wrong.
According to a national survey held by the Bipartisan Policy Center in 2019, 25% to 30% of parents need care during non-traditional work hours failing before or after the 9 to 5 p.m. workday. Despite the need, only 8% of centers and 34% of homes offer extended hours in the evening, overnight or weekends.
Gaylord launched Your Village Transportation in May and said the response has been big enough that she left her job to pursue this full time.
“From the very first flier I put up, within two hours, I had 20 messages on my website from parents who were interested and needed my help,” she said.
With the ability to transport up to 12 people in a passenger van, Gaylord said she also had the ability to transport to and from daycares and preschools because they operate on a different schedule than Oak Park school districts.
OPRF High School parent Monique Jones said Your Village Transportation has given her a way to be able to provide her daughter the ability to be part of extracurricular activities.
“It’s hard to be everything your kid needs,” Jones said. “We all need to reach out for help. They say it takes a village to raise a kid, but we are shying away from that.”
A single mother herself, Jones works and runs a small business, which can often conflict with her daughter’s extracurriculars.
“It’s overwhelming not to be able to do things because you have to do other things to provide for your household,” Jones said.
The transportation service lets her 16-year-old daughter have reliable transportation without having to depend on others who might not be available when needed.
Gaylord is planning to have two different options for services: one way and roundtrip transportation.
Because of the positive feedback and high numbers of inquiries, Gaylord said she hopes she is able to grow the company in the upcoming months by adding another driver.
“I want to hire other parents, hopefully other moms, to give them an option for work,” Gaylord said. “I know other moms are having issues just like myself.”
But the mom doesn’t stop there, saying the big goal is to fully launch a nonprofit, The Missing Village, to help provide essential support for mothers in the community.
Your Village Transportation is the first step, Gaylord said.
“I really just want to be the village that a lot of parents are missing out there,” she added.