RESEARCH
Nola CARES
What is the AdvancingCities Grant?
New Orleans has been named as one of six winning cities in this year’s JPMorgan Chase AdvancingCities Challenge - a $500 million five-year initiative that makes large scale investments in cities where deeper investments are needed to drive inclusive growth. Led by Beloved Community, a collaborative of twelve organizations will receive $5 million over three years to address caregiving as a barrier to Black & Latinx women's wealth creation.
What is Nola CARES?
Together, the collaborative has developed NoLa CARES (Creating Access, Resources and Equity for Success). The project seeks to align policy and practice across sectors so Black & Latinx mothers working in caregiving professions are valued and build wealth as the entrepreneurs, workforce, and beneficiaries of high-quality employer-supported child care.
Two key interventions will be implemented: 1) introducing child care as a workplace benefit and 2) providing capital and/or business & workforce training to support Black & Latinx women who provide childcare for Black & Latinx families.
Project Partners
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Agenda for Children works to improve a child’s well-being by supporting, informing and empowering the adults who can impact their lives, including teachers, parents, policymakers and donors.
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BanchaLenguas is a worker-owned collective based in New Orleans (also named Bulbancha by the original native peoples of this land and its descendants) that partners with communities to create multilingual spaces through high-quality and responsible in-person and virtual interpretation, translation, consulting and language justice training.
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Beloved Community is a non-profit consulting firm focused on implementing regional, sustainable solutions for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
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The Office of Youth & Families works to improve child well-being by increasing coordination between agencies, expanding resources, ensuring equitable policymaking and engaging youth and community input.
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Early Partners is a non-profit focused on building a scalable and sustainable model for high-quality early childhood education (ECE) through public-private partnerships.
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For Providers by Providers of Louisiana (4pxp) is a non-profit formed by experienced child care providers for child care providers to coordinate their leadership development, engage them in policy advocacy, provide business technical assistance and training, and launch demonstration projects to expand their impact and financial sustainability.
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The Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) strives to provide educators, stakeholders, and the general public citizens with information, leadership, technical assistance and the oversight necessary to create a world-class education system for our children. Through its various offices, the LDOE implements initiatives that will help Louisiana reach its critical student outcome goals efficiently and effectively.
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The Louisiana Policy Institute for Children is a nonpartisan, independent source of data, research, and pertinent information for policymakers, stakeholders, and the public at large around issues related to children ages birth through four in Louisiana. We also develop policy proposals informed by data, research, best practices and the experiences of other states for improving outcomes for Louisiana's young children and conduct educational and outreach activities around these recommended policy solutions.
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The Power Coalition for Equity & Justice (Power Coalition) is Louisiana's leading coalition of groups involved in grassroots organizing and power building with Black and Latinx communities.
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Total Community Action addresses the needs of the poor and near-poor by providing direct assistance and the opportunity for people to better help themselves. Total Community Action’s mission is to reduce poverty in our community through Collaboration with other agencies by providing human services, experiences and opportunities that move persons from poverty to self- sufficiency.
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United Way of Southeast Louisiana (UWSELA) coordinates the GLR collaborative, which engages 125+ businesses, childcare centers, parents, elected officials, advocates, program providers, schools, and philanthropists to expand access to quality child care in New Orleans.
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Windsor Court Hotel is a luxury hotel located in the Central Business District. In Collaboration with Early Partners, Windsor Court is building a consortium of New Orleans hotels to provide priority access for enrollment to their employees.
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“The Nola CARES project represents a transformational opportunity to take a holistic approach to economic equity for Black and Latinx women. In this project we are truly taking a systemic approach to disrupting cycles of inequity for women in our communities.”
Lesley Brown Rawlings Vice President of Strategy
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“This bold, collaborative effort will aid not only in boosting our economy, but also reducing poverty and crime and building better futures for our children and our city. Overall, this partnership is a great example of how we are prioritizing high-quality early childhood education and care, especially for our underserved Black and Latinx communities."
LaToya Cantrell Mayor of New Orleans
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“This investment from JPMorgan Chase is going to be catalytic for economic mobility of Black and Latinx women in our region. We're honored to partner with such committed and innovative leaders to provide comprehensive support that includes workforce development, entrepreneur capacity-building, community engaged research, and ultimately access to more quality child care options for all New Orleans families.”
Rhonda Broussard Founder and CEO of Beloved Community.
Project Overview
Child care center owners in New Orleans—who are almost exclusively Black and Latinx women—lack access to capital to improve and expand their facilities, leaving thousands of children unserved. The pandemic has heightened this lack of investment, as more than one-third of Louisiana child care business owners expect to close due to insufficient public subsidies that fail to cover the cost of care and high facility costs and lack of operating capital.
With support from JPMorgan Chase, the collaborative will increase access to capital, provide training opportunities for career advancement and develop a more equitable workforce in New Orleans, informed by the experiences of more than 800 Black and Latinx women. Nola CARES seeks to align policy and practice across sectors so Black and Latinx mothers working in caregiving professions are valued and able to build wealth as the entrepreneurs, workforce, and beneficiaries of high-quality employer-supported child care.
Over the Next Three Years Nola CARES will…
Help at least 120 Black and Latinx women receive a Child Development Associate certification,
Establish an Early Learning Facilities Fund to make low-or no-cost childcare facilities more widely available,
Create a cohort of 20 local hospitality businesses to develop and implement plans for racially equitable workplaces that help Black and Latinx women advance into management positions,
Engage at least 500 women in participatory research and coordinate public policy to provide low-cost facilities to child care centers and increase public subsidies and worker compensation in New Orleans.
Questions?
Contact our Team at the DRIP Center to learn more.