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.”
Six killed in a 'foiled coup' in Congo, the army says
Small Mountainous Village Amazes Big World
Decades of Safeguarding Mountains, Forests
Forming Bond with China Through Architectural Design
Target to lower prices on basic goods in response to inflation
Seedling Breeder Helps Farmers Attain Wealth by Developing Vegetable Cooperative
Social Worker Warms Residents Through 'A Spoon of Rice'
Illuminating Each Child’s Future
Supreme Court rejects an appeal from a Canadian man once held at Guantanamo
Enjoying Breathtaking Landscapes, Folk Culture in Nanjian
Socialite Jasmine Hartin enjoys beach snuggle with electrician hunk
Vibrant Hong Kong, 'Pearl of the Orient'