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Iowa Womens Foundation finds need for child care in FD schools

About a year and a half ago, the privately funded Iowa Women’s Foundation visited Fort Dodge and posed a question: What do local women need to become financially stable?

It set the group of people who were listening to thinking.

“I had a student who lived in her car to afford child care, school and work; cut out housing altogether. She had two kids. Had to cut out housing because she needed child care, food, other things, but also knew her education would have a difference,” a member of the group responded.

Last summer, on a followup visit to what was called the “SHE MATTERS: We Listen and Iowa Wins” tour, Dawn Oliver Wiand, the IWF’s executive director, helped roughly the same group that had assembled for that initial meeting to refine local need.

The answer, for Fort Dodge, was child care in the schools.

Child care so that mothers who are students can continue their education.

Child care so that mothers who are teachers can better negotiate their days.

Child care at the college level and child care at the high school level.

Child care is a potentially costly impediment that can prevent a sizeable number of women from getting a solid financial foothold, that meeting concluded.

Because that group had been challenged to identify a need for which there is a potential solution, the lack of child care was an ideal candidate.

Seventy percent of Iowa’s female-headed households struggle for financial security, the IWF has said.

Of that 70 percent, 40 percent are living in poverty, according to 2015 statistics gathered by the State Data Center of Iowa.

The other 30 percent don’t earn enough to support their basic living expenses, according to “The Working Poor Families Project” in 2013-2014 statistics.

The Fort Dodge ah-ha moment coalesced with about 20 people seated around tables at the Greater Fort Dodge Growth Alliance’s conference room in July 2016 when Wiand challenged those in attendance to refine their roughly crafted lists of barriers women face in their journey to financial – and life – stability.

It was the kind of moment that would be repeated 17 more times throughout Iowa eventually.

Fort Dodge was the first stop on that trip around the state.

“Child care is a barrier in many of the communities and a number of them are working on ways to resolve it,” Wiand said in August.

“I am impressed with the commitment to the community,” she said, referring to Fort Dodge. “Those in attendance are eager to make a difference and help women and girls become economically self-sufficient. We are honored and humbled to work with them and help women and girls across Fort Dodge overcome the child care barrier.”

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