Washington Heights and Inwood have over 30,000 children under the age of 10. For these children, there are only 10,204 daycare, after school and Head Start slots available, leaving 66% of local children without childcare. Parents seeking childcare are faced with long waiting lists. Lack of affordable, vacant commercial space further hinders the development of community-based childcare centers. NMIC's Happy Faces Childcare Network addresses this need by training local women to operate registered, quality home-based family daycare businesses. The network's providers, the majority of whom are Latina immigrants, care for over 500 neighborhood children.

Impact

The program trained over 200 public assistance recipients and other low-income women as registered family daycare providers, while simultaneously creating over 540 quality childcare slots, and enabling over 400 parents to go to work secure that their children are well cared for.

The Network has a 100% job retention rate with annual incomes between $25-70,000.

The overwhelming success of our program has attracted national attention, and in 2003 the Enterprise Foundation honored the Happy Faces program at their national workforce development conference.

For more information, please contact Isabel Quintana-Eddy at (212) 543-0260 Ext. 204