The LIFTS Podcast

Maria Emmer-Aanes - It Takes a Village

• Season 5 • Episode 10

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0:00 | 26:04

Guest Bio: 

Maria Emmer-Aanes is the Executive Director of The Village Playspace and the Early Childhood Coalition of Beaverhead County, where she works alongside parents, partners, and neighbors to build strong, connected communities for kids and families in rural Montana. Her work is rooted in a simple belief: when families feel supported and connected, everyone does better.
 
 Maria is the co-founder of the Beaverhead Brigade, a grassroots nonprofit created to restore after-school transportation for students, and the founder of the Good Food Network, a community-led effort focused on improving access to clean, nutritious food and food education across Beaverhead County. She also serves as a Rural Ambassador for the Montana Nonprofit Association, helping elevate rural voices and strengthen nonprofit leadership across the state.
 
 A mom of two boys and married to a fly fishing guide, Maria brings both lived experience and professional insight to her work—balancing family life, community building, and a deep love for the place she calls home.
  

Episode Description:

In this episode of the LIFTS Podcast, host Emily Freeman talks with Maria Emmer-Aanes, Executive Director of the Early Childhood Coalition of Beaverhead County and the Village Play Space in Dillon.

Maria shares how her coalition works to build resilience and strengthen families in one of Montana’s most rural regions — from innovative transportation solutions and intergenerational community programs to creative ways of addressing food insecurity and childcare gaps. Together, they explore what it means to raise kids, connect families, and grow community in a county where distances are vast but relationships run deep.

Highlights include:

  • How Early Childhood Coalitions collaborate statewide to share ideas and support families
  • The power of parent advisory councils and listening to families’ lived experiences
  • Innovative rural models like pay-what-you-can thrift stores, diaper banks, and local food networks
  • Building intergenerational community through shared meals, gardening, and life-skills education

Maria’s message:
“It really does take a village — and sometimes that village starts with just one conversation, one meal, or one connection.”

Resources: 

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Connect with Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies

For statewide resources to support Montana families in the 0-3 years of parenting, check out the LIFTS online resource guide at
https://hmhb-lifts.org/

Emily Freeman, HMHB-MT: 0:04

Welcome to season five of the LIFTS podcast, where we connect with parents, caregivers, providers, and advocates for Montana families in the early years of parenting. Through personal stories of lived experience and expert insights, we highlight the people and programs that are helping families thrive. I'm Emily Freeman and this is The LIFTS Podcast, A project of Healthy Mothers Healthy Babies, the Montana Coalition.

Maria: 0:31

My name is Maria Emmer-Aanes and I'm the Executive Director of the Early Childhood Coalition in Beaverhead County and the Village Play Space.

Emily: 0:38

Wonderful. Thanks for being here. What is an Early Childhood Coalition? What does that phrase mean?

Maria: 0:45

Early Childhood Coalition is, uh, for us, we actually focus on kids between the ages of zero and five. Building resilience in the most important years of a child's life, trying to strengthen the family as much as we possibly can, and working with partners in our community in order to be a resource hub for all of that. So like what kinds of partners, for example, in in Beaverhead County do you work with? So we're really connected not only to law enforcement but also we have partnerships with Beaverhead County Health. There is a county health program here for migrant workers that we're working with closely as well. We work with Zero to Five and Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies, we work with them. We also work with a lot of, uh, childcare providers, um, helping build capacity and provide resources for the community and we even have an interfaith, group that we work with to get materials to people. Okay. So it's sort of like a, like a network of relationships.

Maria: 1:41

Yeah, it's a network of relationships and services and, you know, we find out what the need is and then we call folks up and just do everything that we can to support them. We do have a neat relationship with a contractor that does Medicaid for folks. So we get family on Medicaid programs that might have gotten kicked off, and we have, um, a mom with 25 years of lived experience that knows how to get in that system and turn things around quickly. So it really becomes an incredibly valuable resource for people who are, you know, suffering or who have lost services and, you know, need help.

Maria: 2:14

Food, shelter, clothing, you name it. And do Early Childhood Coalitions look different in different parts of the state? I'm learning that they do. I have, uh, did a road trip last year and I just realized, um, a rural community to a more suburban community makes a big difference. Transportation is usually in a rural community, the biggest challenge because without transportation services that are solid and consistent, it's hard to get services and get to services. Um, especially for families. We work with blended families, uh, which is a real challenge for a lot of families right now. And then also we have support groups for folks that have children with disabilities or they may be struggling themselves somehow.

Emily: 2:55

And why is this countywide work? And can you, for someone listening who's not familiar with Beaverhead County, which is a very rural, very big, very sparsely populated county in Montana, what are the challenges to get to every corner of the county?

Maria: 3:13

Well, to be totally honest, we have not figured that out yet. Mm-hmm. And we've been working on it for a few years. It's really hard. But we are taking a page out of some of the other rural county books. Lincoln County, for example, has done an amazing job working with the Department of Transportation with an event van that goes around and, and allows them to get to people who need services. In Beaverhead County, we have a 500 mile Radius County with 9,500 people in a, uh, at, with 4,500 of those people in the Dillon City proper. So within 40 miles of Dillon, over half of the population lives near in Dillon. We do pull from Madison County and sometimes even Butte Silver Bow, but getting to the folks outside of the Dillon perimeter is really, really difficult. In fact, we just worked with two partners in town and started a bus company. This is a nonprofit bringing kids to afterschool activities. But we're gonna eventually turn that into a transportation company that hopefully allows us to go ahead and reach out further into the mm-hmm. County. Then maybe that can be a role model for other folks too.'cause we're ready to pan it over and have people do it in their own community. Mm-hmm. We just spent a year building it, so we're happy to share it.

Emily: 4:23

Yeah. It seems like there's a lot of collaboration and knowledge sharing among Early Childhood Coalitions. Are there regular meetings or how do, how do people in this work around the state come together to share what's working for them and kind of pool their resources? That's a great question.

Maria: 4:42

So we started out as an early childhood play space, just a great indoor place for people to, um, bring their kids to play and moms to connect. And then there's a coalition called the Early Childhood Coalition the MTECC, Montana Early Childhood Coalitions that come together once a month and companies like Zero to Five, and Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies in support with the Headwaters Foundation grant, have been able to help bring us not only all together in, um, monthly meetings, but we do a lot of conferences and there is a ton of sharing. The thing that I really love about this community is that everyone's so willing to give whatever they've learned and pass it along, and we are constantly, really standing on the shoulders of our neighbors and building this thing forward as an entire state. But each one of us has a unique thing in our own county. Some folks have Native American communities in their county. Um, we happen to be working with the, um, ag workers and, migrant workers in our community. So those are different approaches in different ways that we need to, you know, not only spend resources, but. Really like kind of learn what is available in our community, where are the gaps that aren't there, and how do we figure out how to fill gaps that are in high need.

Emily: 5:51

It sounds like it's not a one size fits all approach. It's very specific to the demographics or the needs or the issues of a particular part of the state at a particular time.

Maria: 6:01

Yeah, it is. But what's so neat about these meetings that we do monthly, there's a ton of innovation that comes out in those meetings of people just bootstrapping and trying to figure it out, and then they'll share something that's like that's an epiphany. We could be doing that here. Mm-hmm. This makes a total sense.

Emily: 6:15

And what are the, what are currently the biggest needs or challenges that you're seeing for families with young children in Beaverhead County? Has that changed in the time that you've been in the work?

Maria: 6:26

Yeah, it's a very rural community and most of the families here are living on the poverty line. So the biggest needs are really food right now. With all the cuts that have happened, there's been a big, um, gap there. We did just start another nonprofit called The Good Food Network, which is really focusing on that issue, trying to build a four acre sustainable Cooperative Community garden that feeds the food bank that then ultimately feeds people in our community that need help that way, which will help pick up some of the gaps that SNAP and WIC have lost. We also have a pay as you can thrift store, which is wonderful because we have a lot of people in this community that just can't afford to buy clothing or, even furniture for their child. And so, we work very closely with Beaverhead County Health on car seat clinics. The last time we did it, we gave out 55 brand new car seats for people in the community and and their caregivers,'cause we don't want people taking those car seats out. That has always surprised us how many people we get to show up to those kind of things.

Emily: 7:26

Well I love what you were saying about the pay what you can thrift store. One of the things about Dillon in Beaverhead County is there really isn't a place to get a lot of baby and toddler stuff. It's not like a larger community where you can just run to Walmart. There's not much there to buy. If a family has to go to Butte to get a onesie and a safe sleep sack or a Halloween costume for their toddler, you knows it's an hour away.

Maria: 7:51

And working parents don't have time to really do that until the weekend comes around. So it can be kind of an urgent thing. We've even been working with some of the interfaith groups to bring in the younger kids clothing because it's so high quality and we, you know, we give it away free if it needs to be given. But even we have grandparents coming in here buying things for their grandkids too. Mm-hmm.. So it is really nice to be able to have that. We also offer. We have a diaper bank, we have formula. We're a pack and PlayStation now, so you can come by and we can give you a crib. We work with the Women's Resource Center quite a bit, with domestically abused partners, and we help those folks quite a bit just get set up and stabilized more than anything.

Emily: 8:29

Well, and when we talk about cribs and pack and plays I understand that you make a real effort to ensure that whatever secondhand things you are receiving and giving out are safe and to code.

Maria: 8:42

We do have a wonderful partner in Safe start out of Idaho who has really come in and educated our whole staff and our volunteers on what needs to be thrown away, and most of it needs to be tossed. Like we do not take car seats anymore. We take them in only to take the straps off of'em and throw'em in the garbage because mm-hmm. I mean, they might have been in an accident, you can't tell. And we're getting our team also, um, car seat tech trained. Oh good. So yeah, vigilante electric co-op in our town has given us a safety grant for that. And we're sending our team to classes, which would be great. Great.

Emily: 9:14

Wonderful. That's really important. That's one of our other podcast episodes is all about Montana's new car seat law and car seat techs. So talk to me about the staff at the Early Childhood Coalition and at the play space. Who are the people that are in the work besides you and what does that, what does that work look like for them?

Maria: 9:32

This is a great question because this is something that I care a lot about. As a working full-time woman with a career living and working all over the world the idea of being able to be a parent that can bring your child to work with you was so appealing to me. It became a real value of mine and it's something that in this stage of the game, I'm so happy to pay forward, um, because I've had the experience myself of being able to do that. As the Executive Director, I have seven staff folks. They work part-time, so somewhere between 10 and 20 hours a, um, week. And we, they cover all the staffing duties. So they come in with their children. And, um, they're here while other parents are here. They're here to connect with those parents, talk to'em about some of the parenting classes that we offer, some of the events that we do with kids and to just help further their learning. On top of that, it's really important that they actually have the safety training that they need. So we just, um, hired one of them as the Parent Advisory Council leader. That's probably the thing I'm most excited about this year. We have 22, mostly women, that serve on a Parent Advisory Council. We meet with them quarterly now, but we were meeting with them monthly and the thing that I love is that the parent's voice is now infused into our company in just the most amazing way. So the staff that's working with those parents every day have invited those parents into a conference room. We feed them, we actually give them childcare, and they tell us what they love about the services that we provide and what they think needs to be done that's not being done. And then also the things that they think we should discontinue. So we're constantly, you know, working on real needs of, of parents and we're, we're listening into that all the time and it's shaping how we're doing our programming.

Emily: 11:17

That feels so important and so valuable because it seems like often in these kind of human services spaces it's so easy to offer a program or a service because you think it's what's needed or because maybe you got a certain grant for it, but it's not actually a program that is needed or is wanted. But to say to the people, we are here to serve you. What are your needs that we may be missing or where are we missing the mark on how we're doing things? That's just such a lovely thing to be open to that.

Maria: 11:47

It's such a great, it's a wonderful shift, I have to say. And it's brought in elder volunteers, believe it or not. We have an intergenerational community. So the rural model is a little bit of, uh, research and development. It's a fairly new thing where we've been out, um, doing these rural programs and sometimes things just don't work. You know, they were designed for a different size community and you can't be afraid to let go of one thing in order to grab onto something that's more important.

Emily: 12:12

Well, and I love what you said about trying something but not being afraid to pivot, let it go. But it seems like it's not, which is like the perfect metaphor for parenthood in general, right? Like you, it is, you do what you think is the best decision at the time, or the best approach at the time based on what you know, right? And then if you observe that it's not really working. Not being afraid to adjust that. If it's not working, don't be afraid to say, okay, let's try something new. Maybe that's not the best approach for this kid, so, right.

Maria: 12:42

Or for that parent, you know, either, either way. Yeah. 

Emily Freeman, HMHB-MT: 12:44

Or for this season of life, you know? Yeah. A lot of people in Beaverhead County you know, there are fair amount of moms who have partners who do seasonal work. So if you're the partner of a, a trucker or a cowboy or any of these seasonal works where dad is gone for a while, right? Your approach as a mom, you know, maybe that's when you lean on the Early Childhood Coalition a little bit more and your your village of other moms, because suddenly you're home alone with littles and it looks different.

Maria: 13:11

That's a good insight on your part because that is exactly what happens here. We do have a lot of long haul tracker and families that are gone during the week. A spouse might be gone during the week or they're working two jobs, it can be really challenging. To give you an example of how the Parent Advisory Council has really helped shaped us, they asked us to bring in a co-parenting class. Because they felt like, um, a lot of the parents had felt like they had a blended family and they were putting their kids in the middle of it, and they could just see that it wasn't good for the kids. So they had us do this co-parenting class, and I sat through it. And there were five couples in there. And at the end of it they said, this was such a great experience for us can we keep meeting? And I said, well, let's, let's get in a room and have a conversation about why you wanna meet and let's kind of learn more about that. So we did a listening session and out of that came a innovative idea of putting a licensed social worker in the room with the parents and a play therapist in the room with the kids. So both of those groups got to talk to each other about what was bothering them and why they weren't able to talk to each other about what was going on in their family. And, um, it start, it's working out really well and we're trying to create a curriculum to share with the Montana Early Childhood Coalitions on blended family support, because I can't imagine a better way of strengthening a community when you are strengthening a family that is blended. I said, well two things. It's not gonna be, it's not gonna be a dating service and it's not gonna be a place where you can complain about your spouse.'Cause we are here about those kids and the kids are in the middle of it, and our focus is on the kids and what the kids need. So if you're game for that, then we can go ahead and collaborate on this, idea of yours and it's just worked out great.

Emily: 14:52

That's seems brilliant to me. Kudos to you for providing those other spaces and checking in on them, right. And having that regular connection with the parent advisory group you know, just to say, Hey, are our current programs working? And how often does that group meet? Is that a monthly thing that you connect with them? 

Maria: 15:10

We do it quarterly now, monthly was too tight because we weren't able to get action done in between, and the parents just get frustrated if you're not able to move the dime in some way, you know? Mm-hmm. So we said, let's just back up and we don't have to rush it. It's gonna take us a few months to even just absorb what you told us and mm-hmm. We're also evolving as a strategic framework, we're moving away from zero to five, not necessarily moving away. We're keeping our foothold on what's been working in that capacity, but we're also expanding to 18. Oh, great. Because we want to not off board those young kids. We wanna have them their whole lives.

Maria: 15:44

Yeah. And we're learning how that looks and what that might sound like. And for people who have had their little ones here, they're a little nervous about the older kids coming in because the older kids are kind of rough and tumble and so it's gonna take some interest. We're actually pilot testing a couple of groups of kids between the ages of five and 12 to have a conversation with them about like, what could you see doing here after school? Is summer camp a possibility? The idea of the blended families group actually came from a child that I was teaching safe sitter to who sat me down and said i'm having a really hard time with my parents. Can we talk? Mm-hmm. It turned into this splendid family group, um, which is great. So I think the kids are gonna tell us a lot too, and I'm really excited about launching that pilot test this year and hearing the voices of the children and pairing them with these parents and just, really getting a better picture of what's going on.

Emily: 16:36

Yeah. That's so important too, in a place like Dillon. Especially the more we learn about aCEs like adverse childhood experiences, and then the positive childhood experiences Yes. That can counteract the negative effects of the ACEs. And one of those pieces that you know, is having those relationships with trusted adults who aren't just Right, your parents.

Maria: 16:57

That's why we say it takes a village to raise a family. I mean, one of the things that I, even in my childhood, you know, we grew up in a family of nine kids, and I if it wasn't for my neighbors and the, teachers that I had, and the coaches that I had, I mean, they, they really did, uh, support our family in so many ways. Because what two parents can take care of nine children? I mean, that's a pretty tall order. And it's just really neat. I took the ACEs inventory and I didn't realize that I was actually kind of high on the ACEs list until I learned about PCE's. And then I realized that positive experience is all about the neighbors who support you. It doesn't have to be your parents. It can be other people in your community that fill gaps in.

Emily: 17:41

And we'll put these links in the show notes, you know, as we're rattling off things like Safe Sitter and ACEs and MTECC. Oh yeah, we will. I'll put all these links in the show notes as resources for people who want to, to learn more. That's great. One other thing that I think you do really well there and that I admire your commitment to is providing food and childcare. Can you talk about that for a second and why that's so important to you?

Maria: 18:04

Yeah. I think it's the kingpin to why our education programs do really well at night. One thing we've learned from our advisory council is that there's a day part of moms that are being missed with these education classes because they're is a gap between noon and five or sometimes maybe two and five, where their children are up from a nap and they are focused on getting dinner on the table maybe. But there is a time there where they're not, they don't have much to do. And so they're asking us to, um, bring them in and, and do not only parenting classes, but things like yoga where they can just relax. So we, we feed the kids snacks and we take care of them while those guys just go into the conference room and do yoga and stretch and breathe which mental health and physical health wise is really a great break for mom in the middle of the day. But in terms of like providing childcare and food, we're trying to get better at the food that we do provide. We are actually now providing recipe cards when we make a meal. We try to do it for five ingredients and in a really affordable way so that we can give the parents those recipe cards and they can go home and cook themselves. One step better is going to be. We have a committed group of moms from the Parent Advisory Council that wants to pilot test a crockpot cooking class with University of Montana Western students and the kids in the high school, because every kid that gets outta high school is probably going to do some life on their own, whether it's school or travel or whatever they're gonna need to cook.

Maria: 19:31

Cooking is a life skill, so we're like, okay, this afternoon day part thing, and going into these older groups means teaching them life skills. So what are the life skills they need to learn and how do we get people in here that are experts? And a lot of those people are intergenerational people. So now you have a connection between children that are growing and these wiser adult folks that have lived a whole life. And this exchange of advice is going back and forth and a time in a place where a lot of people their grandparents aren't living here. And so they're getting sage advice from an elder person that has lived, a whole life. And I think it's a bond that is just magical when you see it happen here.

Emily Freeman: 20:08

Well and in Montana, women can live a really long time and so you have these older women with so much accumulated wisdom and they don't always necessarily have their own kids or grandkids who need or want that knowledge, right? But they have this abundance of life and energy and love to give, and that idea that you could bring them in and say, Hey, teach this group how to make a beef stew, you know, in a crockpot. I love your commitment to the crockpot and that you're making it so accessible to people, both in terms of the appliance and, right, that you're saying five ingredients.

Maria: 20:43

Even one step better because you've got all these moms that have hacked the food system in a way that's like, Hey, take this tip and trick, and they're Yeah. Exchanging all these great trade secrets. And then you have the elderly person that's like, well, you know what I used to do when I was a mom? And totally, you get all this just rich content. And it inspires people and it it, mm-hmm. You know, it's the connection really that matters. The one example I would give you, my favorite thing that happened this year was on our community day of service. We ended up getting 56 volunteers to come in and create six garden beds and four worm composters and it was so amazing because of the 56 volunteers, six of them were carpenters, but you had all these older women that came by that loved gardening, that were helping Montana Youth Challenge kids.

Maria: 21:29

And they were helping all these other volunteers, not only paint bird houses and do all this great stuff, but literally out of stuff we collected from the community, it cost us no money. We took this live edge wood and made this incredible sensory garden for kids. So the next step to that is teaching these cooking classes in a geodome classroom at the garden, mm-hmm. And bringing people out in the experience of nature and harvesting food, and cooking food and planting food, and doing the mental and physical things that a garden nurtures in your soul.

Emily Freeman: 22:02

You know, sometimes these early childhood spaces don't feel as inviting to older men, partly because just in their generation maybe they weren't really particularly hands-on when their kids were that little. But maybe a grandpa, especially one in a, in a rural area like Beaverhead County, where the men are largely like are ranchers. They know their way around tools and equipment. To provide those spaces where you say, Hey, we need someone who can put some things together. We need someone who can build some garden boxes or dig some holes for us. Like what a lovely invitation that meets an older man where he's at and values his skillset and doesn't say, well, you're not welcome here'cause you don't really know how to swaddle a baby, but says, Hey, you are so welcome here because your skills are so necessary. And that is a way that you can love these moms and these babies and this community, with your own vocabulary of love.

Maria: 22:56

Well said, because that's exactly what happens and it's so cool to see.

Emily: 23:01

Something I love about the work you're doing in some of the projects that you've shared about is they are at their core, simple and replicable. Some of these things are something that anyone in any community could do. You know, if it's about having a crockpot cooking class, that's something that you could do at a library or right at someone's house. You know, some of these things could start small and simple even without having a brick and mortar facility to host it. Every church has a great kitchen. Maybe somebody listening thinks, oh man, I've been looking for ways to get moms together as we're going into the winter it gets harder and harder as it gets darker and colder. And so what a great time to be like, Hey, simple cooking, glass, cooking 1 0 1. Just come in, bring your kids. They'll play in one room and we'll do something super simple in a crockpot and just those baby steps of connection.

Maria: 23:52

It's wonderful. And I will just add that one of the benefits that comes from that too is you can't believe how many people wanna volunteer here after that. It's so great. They're like, what do you need help with? And then, and that's how the community really builds.

Emily: 24:04

Yeah. And you know, in parts of the state where, communities do rely so heavily on volunteerism for everything from fire departments to library story time, you can get that idea that, oh, well, there's just volunteer fatigue and people are just maxed out at being asked to do stuff. But sometimes it's that they're just kind of bored of the existing options. So it might, yeah. Spark an interest in someone who's tired of some of the same old things that have started to feel almost burdensome or obligatory, you know?

Maria: 24:33

The thing I would just add to that, and I think it's a really good point you're making, but that's really where our partners come in. Like we know what we're good at and we know what we're not good at. Mm-hmm. Like what our last thing that we wanna do is create duplicative services. We do not want that.

Maria: 24:46

You know, we're not out to take on anything that other people are. You know, if they're filling a gap that is a need that's great, then we stay away from it. But if there is something that needs to be offered, this is why we're doing things like the Good Food Network or the Beaverhead Brigade. 

Emily: 25:02

Well, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it.

Maria: 25:04

 Thank you for having me. I really do appreciate it too. Absolutely.

Emily Freeman: 25:10

The LIFTS Podcast is a project of Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies The Montana Coalition, a nonprofit dedicated to improving the health, safety, and wellbeing of Montana families in the zero to three years of parenting. Visit us at hmhb-mt.org to learn more about who we are and what we do. Views and opinions expressed in these interviews do not necessarily represent HMHB as an organization. If you have feedback on the podcast or an idea for a future guest or episode, we'd love to hear from you. Take our LIFTS podcast listener survey at hmhb-mt.org/survey or email us at stories@hmbmt.org. Thanks for listening.