“When my wife was 7 months pregnant, and we had only 9 people working, we ran the business from our studio apartment. Since then, we’ve grown tremendously. We’ve acquired 3 companies, set contracts for 10 additional counties, and have grown overall by 21%”
- Scott Mesh, PhD. Executive Director and Founder of Los Ninos
Their Business
Los Niños Services, Inc. is an award winning multilingual agency serving the developmental needs of young children and their families. They specialize in home and community-based evaluations and services, parent/child groups, service coordination and training for early childhood professionals, parents and students. Known for their quality and excellence of service, they help over 1,200 families every year. Their staff consists of bilingual, licensed professionals, certified in fields like special education, speech pathology, psychology, physical therapy, and more. Simply put, their mission is to serve the underserved and be of great service to others.
Many years running, Los Niños has been recognized as one of New York City’s best companies to work for by organizations like Crains New York and the NYS Society for Human Resources.
As a result of the economic recession, access to finances was very constrained. New York State reduced reimbursements by 10%, and the City by 9%, so other comparable companies were rapidly failing. Los Ninos was one of the few who survived, but had suffered enough losses to make them ineligible for traditional bank lending.
TruFund’s loan helped establish a stable cash flow, allowing them to continue expansion by providing capital for general operations. In 2003, Los Ninos began the Young Child Expo & Conference, an annual event bringing together top leaders in the industry to present essential topics in early childhood development for parents and specialists. Their first conference drew 146 attendees; by 2015 it had grown to 1500 participants with representatives from organizations across the globe.
