20 undergraduate and graduate students from Tufts University, led by faculty members Chip Gidney and Betty Allen, came spent a week in New Orleans cleaning, painting and planting at United Way-affiliated child care centers as part of  Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development’s initiative to help bolster the child care industry in the region.

A full article about the student volunteers can be found on the Tufts University website at http://www.tufts.edu/home/feature/?p=louisiana

When a bus full of volunteers from Tufts pulled up at Gilda's Day Care in New Orleans, they had already driven past boarded-up windows and abandoned homes. Now they saw a child care center with no children, and a pile of dirt where grass and toys should be.

But what they also saw were the center's founders, Warren and Gilda Toledano, arms open wide.

"When we got off the bus, every one of us got a hug," recalls child development doctoral student Laura Beals. "When we got on the bus to leave the last day, we all got a hug again."

Fueled by Toledano's Cajun cooking, the volunteers spent a By the end of it, the outdoors area had been transformed into a clean, bright and lush space. On the fence, the handprints of Tufts volunteers formed a colorful mural.

"There was nothing there and then all of a sudden there's this beautiful courtyard," says Mallary Swartz, a doctoral student who helped to organize the trip.

As New Orleans continues to recover from Hurricane Katrina, some child care facilities in this embattled Gulf Coast city received a much-needed boost this May from the efforts of these 20 undergraduate and graduate student volunteers, led by faculty members Chip Gidney and Betty Allen. The trip was only the latest step in what the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development foresees as a long-term partnership to help bolster the child care industry in the region.

"We have a responsibility to share the resources and share the knowledge that we have, and also to learn about what's happening in the rest of the country and the rest of the world," says Swartz.

This was no ordinary cleanup mission. The trip also presented an opportunity for the students to apply their knowledge in a cross-cultural context and understand the impact the child care industry has on the infrastructure of an entire community.

"Getting a glimpse at the lives that other children are leading really is an eye-opener when thinking about how children develop and how families work together," says Beals. "We learn from them and they learn from us."

A Critical Need

Even before Hurricane Katrina battered the Gulf Coast, the child care industry in that area was suffering, with Louisiana ranking 49th nationally in child well-being for the past several years.

According to a 2006 report by Agenda for Children, a nonprofit Louisiana child care advocacy group, more children in the state under the age of five (78 percent) attend some form of non-parental child care than the national average (65 percent), with the average Louisiana family spending nearly twice as much of its income on child care than the national average. Louisiana also offers the lowest mean hourly wage for child care workers in the nation, at just $6.55.

In New Orleans, where Tufts is currently focusing its efforts, Hurricane Katrina severely affected the child care business. In August 2005, 275 child care centers were in operation. Today, just 98 are open—a 64 percent drop, and many of those are at capacity. In some cases, according to the nonprofit, parents who would like to return to the city for a waiting job cannot due to the lack of reliable child care.

In August 2005, 275 child care centers were in operation in New Orleans. Today, just 98 are open—a 64 percent drop.
 
These numbers have very real consequences for the parents and children of Louisiana, as the workforce and overall economy suffer. The fate of the child care industry there has close ties to the broader infrastructure, which is already hobbling under the weight of a multi-billion dollar recovery.

With the storm exacerbating an already dire situation, national attention has been drawn to the struggle for quality child care in Louisiana. In that sense, the storm had a silver lining.

"The storm presented opportunities," says recent Eliot-Pearson graduate Lisa Schlakman, a key organizer of the efforts. "All of this could have happened had there been no Katrina. On the other hand, I think there wouldn't have been the urgency."

Finding a Way To Help

The initiative came together through a partnership between Tufts and the United Way cultivated by Schlakman and Associate Professor Fran Jacobs. The common bond was Carol Wise, a cousin of Schlakman's and a leading supporter of Success By Six, a United Way program to improve early childhood education. When Wise spoke to Jacobs' class about the situation in New Orleans, students began asking how they could help.

"One of the reasons I chose Eliot-Pearson is their commitment to really becoming involved in the community. They are not an ivory tower academic institution but have people using their skills as they're learning," says Schlakman. "I think there is an awareness that reaching outside the immediate community is an important thing to do."

Tufts volunteers paint a landscape mural at Gilda's.

An initial January fact-finding trip by Allen, Eliot-Pearson chairperson Ellen Pinderhughes and Eliot-Pearson Children's School director Debbie LeeKeenan, as well as trips by United Way officials to Tufts, helped generate ideas on how best to apply Tufts' expertise and laid the groundwork for the May trip. (Read more background here.) In the meantime, other elements of the partnership—including an ongoing pen-pal and sister-to-sister program between students at Eliot-Pearson Children's School and Royal Castle Child Development Center, as well as fundraising and book drives—began taking shape.

The Tufts team concentrated their efforts on Gilda's Day Care as well as Royal Castle and Happy Kids Preschool, two understaffed centers that needed help unpacking, organizing and, of course, taking care of the children. The help was much appreciated; at Royal Castle, a large sign reading "Welcome Tufts Volunteers" greeted the Eliot-Pearson contingent, and participants reported nothing but warm welcomes from the New Orleans community.

Their efforts are beginning to bear fruit. At Royal Castle director Pearlie Harris recently received good scores on her preliminary assessment by the state and Gilda's has since received its license and is completing renovations while marketing for new customers

The child care centers in New Orleans have more staffing and funding challenges and a different cultural and socioeconomic context than many of the centers where the Tufts students had previous experience, such as the Eliot-Pearson Children's School. But the shift in setting did little to dampen their enthusiasm.

"They didn't miss a beat," says Schlakman. "They were in there reorganizing closets, scrubbing floors, and there wasn't a moment's hesitation on anyone's part. It was really wonderful to see. I think it was good for them to see that everything is not like things are in Boston and at Tufts."

"You talk about advocacy in the abstract but this is one of those cases where they desperately need people to be advocating, not only for New Orleans but for childcare."— Lisa Schlakman
 
Such outreach is as educational as it is altruistic. Pinderhughes emphasizes that as much as the Tufts students can lend a hand in the Gulf Coast classrooms, the exposure they receive to cultural variations in child care is invaluable for them as well. The students had to find a way to put their academic training to use without overstepping their welcome and treading on practices carried out in the classrooms. Instead of automatically picking up a crying baby, for example—a practice that some New Orleans teachers believe "spoils" a baby—the Tufts volunteers learned to ask beforehand. That kind of hands-on experience also teaches broader lessons that some Eliot-Pearson graduates may carry into policy and advocacy work.

"I think it will be interesting to see what some of these people end up doing with their child care specialties," says Schlakman. "You talk about advocacy in the abstract but this is one of those cases where they desperately need people to be advocating, not only for New Orleans but for childcare."

As child care centers continue to struggle to find qualified staff and funding, Swartz believes that the determination she observed in New Orleans will sustain them.

"The directors there are so resourceful and so dedicated and so motivated that they know how to get themselves funding for different things," she says. "If they can find the right people who care about children, understand the importance of relationships and are willing to get training, I feel hopeful."

Lasting Connections

With the new academic year underway, Swartz—who is working with Schlakman to develop her curriculum for training family child care providers in Louisiana—is looking forward to resuming her involvement with the New Orleans initiative. Expanding the partnership between Eliot-Pearson and the child care community in New Orleans is also high on the to-do list for Pinderhughes and the rest of the department.

"You don't just go to a community, do what you do for a day and leave," says Beals. "This is hopefully developing an ongoing relationship to really help them and help us learn about them as well."

Tufts volunteers leave their imprint on the courtyard at Gilda's.

Future plans include possible field work opportunities for the Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning addressing needs in child care, in addition to exploring ways to address the mental health needs of both children and caregivers traumatized by the storm and its aftermath and to help teachers deal with classroom and family issues. Tufts also hopes to establish additional partnerships with schools and community organizations in the New Orleans area. And of course, a return trip is on everyone's wish list, likely tied to a course.

If they could have done things differently in May, many of the participants say they would have liked to have time to debrief before scattering to their summer commitments. Looking back now at the defining moments of trip, Swartz's mind turns to the babies she worked with at Happy Kids and Royal Castle, holding them and talking to them while giving the overworked staffers a brief respite.

"I spent a lot of time in the infant rooms thinking about the stress that must be surrounding them at all times with their parents and what they must have gone through," she recalls. "When I saw the babies smile, I thought about the concrete ways that our group was able to help and then also these less tangible, but still important ways that I was able to make a little bit of a difference in a baby's life."