Cooperative Development Institute

Happy Little Paradise Childcare Cooperative

"A place that feels like home."

Happy Little Paradise is a start up cooperative childcare project focused on every-child centered, culturally-linguistically supportive, affordable child care in the Lewiston-Auburn community in the state of Maine. At Happy Little Paradise, we celebrate culture, love, and commitment with each other and the community as some of our core values. Our message to the community is that no matter what you might have been through, you still can control your life and be able to find happiness in life. This is our message and we want the children to see and understand that in our practice.

We ask you to support us in reaching our fundraising goal of $100,000 to pay for the necessary renovations of our 115 Pine Street location, a space we plan to lease-to-own for a permanent childcare space in Lewiston. 

We have a bill of $150,000 in renovations, $50k already covered by a generous grant from the Elmina B. Sewall Foundation, leaving us with an $100,000 funding gap to get started. this includes the following expenses: 
- Property renovations to be licensed: $80,000 (Including fire safety sprinkler system: $60,000, an assessment from an architect: $8,000 
Emergency Crib Ramp: $5,000 
- Bring a second bathroom up to code: $7,000 
- Furniture and playground equipment $35,000
- Office and classroom supplies: $20,000
- Start-up supplies: $3,000
- Pre-opening wages: $10,000
- Insurance: $2,000

We envision a childcare business where:
- Quality matters
- Parents can be involved, feel assured and respected, and share in the care process
- Childcare Business Owners can do what they love, working directly with the children as providers
- Employees have great jobs with room for growth and learning, and a share in the ownership and decision making
- Group Training is built in the the way we work and develop our team as a peer learning cohort of business owners, care providers and small center directors

As a Member co-op, we aim to both educate and explore how cooperative business can support a community driven effort to alter the childcare paradigm in our area to that of quality AND affordability instead of the need to choose between the two. Culturally and Linguistically supportive, affordable care are all needed, and we seek ways to bring this together.

Here is a wonderful video put together by Happy Little Paradise's Assira Ferriera of some of the members taking their CPR training under COVID-safe guidelines this past winter: 



Meet the team: Here is how we have been doing much of our business planning and childcare service provider training during COVID-19 over Zoom:

• healthy food for a growing community, including organic and conventional food
• a dedicated market and support for local farmers and producers
• community ownership and support
• new jobs and living wages for Co-op workers
• a strengthened local economy
• new community connections
• an anchor store as part of an empowered and growing downtown
• inspired celebrations throughout the year
• environmentally responsible practices
• expanded food access and education opportunities
• a local business, cooperatively owned by 1,256 (and counting!) people
• …and more!

• becoming an investor and joining our Preferred Stock offering (at $1,000/share)
• send a check (either tax-deductible or direct)
• becoming a lifetime Founding Member

• Reopening the much-missed café and making it better than ever, with new services, new equipment, an updated menu, and an improved seating area, while keeping the natural light and materials everyone loves
• Continuing the Shop For Me service, which allows us to expand our accessibility
• Adding an additional 33% of retail square footage by relocating offices, prep spaces, coolers, and vents to other locations off the sales floor
• Expanding the bulk section with sanitary pull-down handle bins
• Reorganizing the parking lot to make it more pedestrian-friendly
• Investing in our infrastructure to keep the facility safe for all

We are Jabril Abdi, Seynab Ali, Mohamed Abukar, and Batula Ismail. We are farmers who came to the United States as refugees. We have faced many challenges including not being able to work due to barriers faced by New Americans. We didn’t speak the language or have the education to work a regular job in a society that’s not forgiving for individuals who do not have the technical skills to work in many jobs. This fundraising campaign gives us the opportunity to make our dreams a reality, own land, and finally make a home for ourselves in Maine. 

As African, Somali Bantu, Black, Muslim farmers we grew up in our culture farming and we are honored to farm in Lewiston, Maine. We are respected by our community and have received support from our loyal customers since we came to the United States and started farming in 2006. 


In 2016, after 10 years of farming in Lisbon, New Roots Cooperative was officially formed.

At this time, we began farming a 30-acre farm on College Street in Lewiston. Since then, we have been making improvements to the land including clearing new areas for farming, installing solar panels, and building hoop houses to expand our growing options. We work hard to nurture this land and grow vegetables for our loyal CSA and farmer’s market customers as well as other organizations in the surrounding community. 

Purchasing our land will enable us to continue building a sustainable farm, provide food to the community, and improve the food economy in the local area. As an agricultural cooperative, we are stronger, being able to work together with the support of many organizations including Cooperative Development Institute and Cultivating Community.

We are grateful for the support we have received from you, our community, and other organizations throughout Maine. 


It is now time to move forward with our biggest endeavor to date-purchasing our farmland! We are counting on your support to make it happen. 

Your support of this fundraising campaign will enable us to continue growing and pursuing our goals which include:

- Purchasing the 30-acre parcel that we have been farming and developing since 2016 (cost $87,000) 
- Purchasing equipment to open up areas of the land not currently suitable for farming in order to improve the scale of our operations (cost $72,000)
- Completing soil amendments necessary for long-term sustainability and health of the land (cost $15,000)
- Completing infrastructure improvements and upgrades necessary to efficiently utilize the land to its full capacity including increasing solar capacity, expanding irrigation systems, building storage sheds, and building farm roadways (cost $26,000)


We are grateful for your support and look forward to continuing to provide you with delicious, fresh, local, chemical-free vegetables for many years to come!


We invite you to follow along on Instagram and Facebook as we share our journey and our successes along the way.

Thank you for your support!

The New Roots Cooperative Farmers,
Jabril, Seynab, Mohamed & Batula

Visit the New Roots Cooperative Farm website