With 40 years of experience in comprehensive community development, LISC is expanding its work to ensure all communities have high quality early learning facilities.
Drawing on our deep expertise about the unique challenges of developing these facilities, and our array of relevant financing and technical assistance tools, we are focused on:
- Building a national platform of support for equitable early learning facility access that engages childcare and education providers, advocates, developers, other CDFIs, funders and policymakers
- Delivering technical support to care providers and developers to enhance project implementation and to explore innovative approaches and partnerships
- Assembling flexible capital to address the most pressing market needs
LISC’s child care and early learning team provides thought and policy leadership on a national scale. We forge partnerships across different sectors and help lift up vital conversations that change both funding and practice in meaningful ways.
We recognize and value that child care and early learning is locally driven and locally focused. That’s why we dig deep in local markets, whether by working with state leaders to develop data-driven plans and roadmaps, or working to help assemble and distribute the resources needed to successfully plan and implement facility projects that both increase access and enhance quality. With an eye toward improving equitable access to quality child care and early learning opportunities for all families in all communities, we work hard to meet the varied needs of all types of child care providers, from the small, home-based sole-proprietor to the large-scale, multi-site community-based organization.
The benefits of access to quality child care do not accrue in a bubble. Child care is embedded in all aspects of community development, and it intersects with the critical work being done by every department at LISC. Our approach is comprehensive, effective and—most important—rooted in what neighbors want for themselves, their families and the places they call home.
Racial and social equity is a key component of our work. In late 2020, LISC launched Project 10X, a bold commitment to accelerate and expand efforts to close the racial wealth, health and opportunity gap in the US. Project 10X invests in innovative models and proven approaches designed to create exponential, not incremental, change.
As we rebuild a more resilient child care and early education infrastructure in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, we also have an opportunity to address longstanding gender and racial inequities. Across America there is limited access to quality child care and early education, disproportionately affecting historically disinvested communities of color and rural areas. More than 90% of child care providers are women and more than half are women of color.
As a CDFI, we are poised to support the closing of the capital access gap by providing appropriate capital necessary to grow businesses and in turn increase an individual’s own personal wealth. Increased access to affordable, quality child care will positively impact the careers and economic lives of all women, and would have particularly substantial positive effects for Black women.