Paying It Forward

Debbie Mohelnitzsky didn’t pause when an embarrassed out-of-work dad told her he couldn’t afford to send his son to her daycare center anymore.

“I told him not to worry about money,” Mohelnitzsky told Women’s Day magazine. “We’d take care of his son while he was job hunting. Then I realized that if we could do that for him, we could do it for everyone.”

So Mohelnitzky, of Wasau, Wis., started the “Pay It Forward” campaign. Her Alphabet Soup Child Care II center gave out-of-work parents a free half-day of childcare for kids ages 4 weeks to 12 years. Whether the child had ever attended the daycare center was irrelevant — any parent needing help was welcome. The cost? That parents agree to — you guessed it — pay it forward, doing a good deed for someone else.

The program was so successful that Mohelnitzsky plans to do it again — and other daycare centers have called to ask for advice on starting their own good works.