It Takes a Village. We’re Building It.

I used to think a village was something you were lucky enough to be born into.

Some people seem to arrive in the world already surrounded by one: grandparents down the street, neighbors who know which child belongs to which bicycle, and people who appear with casseroles before anyone has figured out how to ask for help. Their village is simply there, woven into the background of childhood so completely that they may not even recognize it as something extraordinary.

That was not the village I was born into.

A donated Christmas gift mattered. A teacher who noticed mattered. A safe place to land mattered. A person who looked at a struggling child and saw an entire human being, rather than a problem to be managed, mattered.

Building the childhood I wanted my children to remember

When I became a mother, I wanted to build something different for my children, although “different” is probably too small a word for what I meant. I wanted them to know where they would sleep, to trust that there would be food in the kitchen, and to expect that someone would be waiting in the audience looking far too proud during every concert, awards ceremony, school play, sporting event, and painfully long elementary school recorder performance.

So, I built my life around my family. Five children later, motherhood had become the loudest, messiest, funniest, most exhausting, most beautiful part of who I was; it had also reshaped nearly everything I thought I knew about work, success, ambition, and the kind of life I wanted to create.

For a long time, I believed that motherhood and meaningful work were competing for the same limited pieces of me. I could be deeply present for my family, or I could pursue the part of myself that wanted to create, write, build, lead, and contribute beyond the walls of our home, but doing both seemed to require more time, energy, childcare, and uninterrupted thought than any one human being could reasonably possess.

There was still a woman underneath the laundry piles, permission slips, therapy appointments, missing shoes, and snacks requested immediately after someone had refused to eat the meal directly in front of them. She had ideas. She had ambition. She wanted to tell stories, solve problems, create opportunities, and do work that mattered.

I just had not yet found the work that could hold all of her.

Many hats. One slightly overstuffed head.

Macaroni KID works because I do not arrive at it as only a publisher or marketer. I bring every part of my life to the work, including the parts that do not fit neatly on a business card.

The beginning of Macaroni KID by Rachael B.

In May 2024, I became the publisher of Macaroni KID Harrisburg & West Shore, believing, somewhat adorably in hindsight, that I had purchased a website and a weekly newsletter license.

What I had actually taken on was a living, breathing community.

There were calendars to build, articles to write, businesses to meet, families to listen to, events to attend, social media posts to create, newsletters to send, and approximately eleven billion tiny details that nobody notices unless one of them goes wrong. There were also stories everywhere, and once I began seeing them, I could not stop.

There were new parents looking for somewhere they could leave the house without feeling like a disruption; families searching for affordable things to do during a very long summer week; children who needed sensory-friendly experiences; nonprofits doing extraordinary work without extraordinary marketing budgets; and small-business owners trying to turn good ideas, personal passions, and years of sacrifice into sustainable livelihoods.

They did not need another faceless list of links. They needed someone local who would answer the email, attend the event, ask the extra question, remember the child who needed a quieter space, and tell families not only where they could go, but why they might want to go there.

The more I worked, the more the pieces of my life began fitting together. Writing mattered, marketing mattered, advocacy mattered, and motherhood mattered; even my slightly alarming ability to turn one small idea into a color-coded community undertaking involving dozens of organizations, multiple backup plans, and at least one emergency trip to the store suddenly had a purpose.

I had spent years believing that becoming a mother had narrowed the space available for meaningful work, only to discover that motherhood had prepared me for this particular work in ways no conventional professional path ever could. It had taught me how families make decisions, what makes an outing feel possible or impossible, how much invisible planning parents carry, and why belonging is often found in details that other people dismiss as small.

One publication became a regional village

As the work grew, so did Macaroni KID.

In March 2025, I added the Carlisle, Boiling Springs, and Shippensburg publication, and later that year I welcomed the Hershey-area publication into the family. In 2026, after looking honestly at how families in Central Pennsylvania actually live, work, travel, and play, I reorganized those publications into two regional editions divided by the Susquehanna River: Macaroni KID Hershey & Harrisburg to the east and Macaroni KID Carlisle & West Shore to the west.

The boundaries may appear tidy on a map. Family life rarely is.

Parents cross the river for pediatricians, festivals, museums, sports, grandparents, dance classes, special events, ice cream, and the playground their child has decided is the only acceptable playground in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Our two-publication model gives each side of the river a truly local home while recognizing that the best family experiences are sometimes worth crossing a bridge for.

Each week, we gather the events, resources, programs, businesses, and stories local families need. We build calendars, publish guides, share recommendations, introduce readers to the people behind local organizations, and help parents answer the eternal question that has echoed through minivans since the beginning of time:

Sometimes the answer is a festival, concert, theatre performance, museum, or amusement park. Sometimes it is a library program, a quiet trail, a new restaurant, a free community resource, or a small business a family might never have discovered on its own.

The answer is almost always better when someone local helps you find it.

More than places to go

Macaroni KID is often described as a family events and activities resource, which is accurate, but it is also only the front door.

Behind the calendar is a network of families, businesses, nonprofits, advocates, and community organizations that become stronger when the right people are introduced to one another. That is where much of the work happens, although it is not always the part that can be captured neatly in an analytics report.

It happens when a small nonprofit receives donated advertising and reaches families who desperately need its services. It happens when a new business owner joins a major community event and leaves with new customers, professional relationships, and the confidence to keep going. It happens when a sensory-play business is given room to create an inclusive experience for children who might otherwise be left out, or when a local company quietly donates a portion of its event sales to a charitable partner simply because giving back is part of how its owners believe a business should operate.

It also happens when a parent reads an article and realizes that their family is not the only one navigating a diagnosis, disability, financial hardship, grief, complicated childhood, or child who experiences the world differently.

Those moments may begin with marketing, but they become something much bigger.

Everybunny really does belong

One of the clearest examples of that larger purpose is Everybunny Belongs, our inclusive spring celebration created for children and families across ages, abilities, and sensory needs.

Approximately 500 people attended the first year. The following year, more than 1,500 people joined us alongside over 30 businesses and community organizations, generating thousands of dollars in direct community support while giving families something equally important: a place where they did not have to apologize for what they needed.

That matters deeply to me because my family is neurodivergent, and one of my children has significant support needs. I know what it feels like to study an event description for clues about whether your child will genuinely be welcome; I know the mental calculations involved in entering a new space, including the backup plans, snacks, headphones, possible exits, and silent hope that nobody will mistake a difficult moment for bad parenting.

Inclusion cannot be a sentence added to the bottom of a flyer after everything else has already been planned. It has to be built into the experience from the beginning.

That belief helped lead Macaroni KID by Rachael B. to become Pennsylvania’s third Certified Neurodivergent Safe Business, and it continues to shape the events we create, the businesses we recommend, the questions we ask, and the people for whom we intentionally make room.

A business built to give back

Community service is not a side project attached to this business; it is part of the business model.

Through the Macaroni KID Village Builder program, we provide donated marketing, promotional support, articles, email exposure, event opportunities, introductions, and other resources to small nonprofits and community organizations. Over the years, that support has included work benefiting Make-A-Wish through Wish Upon a Food Truck, Big Brothers Big Sisters of South-Central Pennsylvania, Dauphin County Parks and Recreation, Neurodiverse Network, and other organizations serving local families.

Sometimes the contribution is an advertising package, while other times it is event planning, sponsor outreach, a vendor connection, an article, a series of emails, or a social media campaign. Sometimes it is recognizing that two people are trying to solve different pieces of the same problem and simply putting them in a room together.

We measure website visits, email opens, clicks, reach, and engagement because those numbers help us understand what is working and allow us to serve our partners well; however, I also measure the relationships formed, opportunities created, families connected to help, dollars returned to the community, and good ideas that became something real because the right people decided to work together.

The one-person operation that was never really one person

In 2026, Macaroni KID by Rachael B. was named Harrisburg Magazine’s Simply the Best winner in both the One-Person Operation and Promotional or Marketing Services categories.

“One-person operation” is technically accurate, although it has never felt like the complete truth.

I may be the person behind the laptop, newsletters, calendars, articles, events, partnerships, strategy, and truly unreasonable number of open browser tabs, but this is not something I built alone. It is built every time a reader sends me an event I missed, a business trusts me with its story, a nonprofit tells me what families need, or a parent takes a moment to say, “Thank you. I did not know this existed.”

It is built by my husband and our five children, who have lived through photo shoots, community festivals, mysterious piles of event supplies, and conversations that begin with, “I have an idea,” which they now understand may radically alter the next six weekends of their lives.

It is built by every person who shares an article, opens a newsletter, attends an event, nominates a Village Standout, supports a local business, or reaches back to help another family.

What I want my children to see

I grew up believing survival was the goal, but now I want my children to see what can happen after survival.

I want them to understand that a difficult beginning does not get to write the ending, and that success does not have to mean becoming harder, louder, or less human. I want them to see a business that grows by helping other people grow, and a kind of leadership that is measured not only by what one person accomplishes, but also by how many other people are welcomed, supported, connected, and encouraged along the way.

I want my daughters to know that ceilings can be broken, even when you are barefoot with a toddler attached to your leg and somebody asking what is for dinner while you are actively trying to change the world. I want all five of my children to understand that their differences are not inconveniences to erase; they are part of the perspective, creativity, empathy, and fire they will carry into the world.

Most of all, I want them to know that when you finally find safety, you do not pull the ladder up behind you.

You make room.

The village we choose to build

I used to think a village was something you were lucky enough to be born into; now I know it can also be something we choose, deliberately and repeatedly, to build.

It is built through calendars, newsletters, and community events, but also through patience, introductions, donated space, shared stories, quiet acts of generosity, and people who continue showing up. It is built when families choose local businesses, businesses invest in the communities that sustain them, nonprofits receive the visibility they deserve, and children of every ability are welcomed exactly as they are.

It is built when someone who once needed the village grows up and decides to become part of it for somebody else.

Macaroni KID gave me a place where motherhood, writing, business, advocacy, and meaningful work no longer had to compete for separate pieces of me; together, they became the foundation of something larger than I could have imagined when I first sat down to build a weekly newsletter.

This village belongs to the families who use it, the businesses and organizations that invest in it, and the people who keep choosing to show up for one another.

It takes a village.
We’re building it.

Find your part of the village

Subscribe to your local edition, follow both sides of the river, or learn how your business or organization can become part of what we are building.