NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Last summer, Derrika Richard felt stuck. She didn’t have enough money to afford child care for her three youngest children, ages 1, 2 and 3. Yet the demands of caring for them on a daily basis made it impossible for Richard, a hairstylist, to work. One child care assistance program rejected her because she wasn’t working enough. It felt like an unsolvable quandary: Without care, she couldn’t work. And without work, she couldn’t afford care. But Richard’s life changed in the fall, when, thanks to a new city-funded program for low-income families called City Seats, she enrolled the three children at Clara’s Little Lambs, a child care center in the Westbank neighborhood of New Orleans. For the first time, she’s earning enough to pay her bills and afford online classes. “It actually paved the way for me to go to school,” Richard said one morning this spring, after walking the three children to their classrooms. City Seats, she said, “changed my life.” |
China initiates program to boost employment among college graduatesInterview: ITER directorNew finds in China's Guizhou indicate prehistoric human activity over 55,000 years agoInt'l scientists conduct joint experiments with China's artificial sun teamChinese artists from Yunnan perform in Capital Governorate, KuwaitProduction base of China's large civil unmanned aerial vehicle Wing Loong in SichuanChina's secondPolar Research and Climate Change exhibition held in Hong KongProduction base of China's large civil unmanned aerial vehicle Wing Loong in SichuanTibetan incense brings wealth to town of SW China's Xizang