GREEN BAY — Local Somali families are one step closer to having culturally appropriate child care options thanks to a new grant.
Drawing from its new One Community Fund, the Greater Green Bay Community Foundation is devoting $100,000 over the next three years to help the YWCA Greater Green Bay, Family and Child Care Resources of Northeast Wisconsin and Community Services Agency Inc. open culturally centered child care classrooms.
Green Bay has a lack of child care options that meet Somali families’ cultural and language needs. For example, Somali people practice Islam, and centers may serve food that is prohibited by the religion. Not having culturally appropriate child care can compromise Somali families’ work opportunities, as well as endanger the broader local economy, COMSA leadership previously told the Green Bay Press-Gazette .
That’s why, a few years ago, they partnered with Family and Child Care Resources of N.E.W. and Brown County United Way to host the classes needed to become a Wisconsin child care worker for Somali immigrants and refugees specifically: classes in the Somali language, with on-site, culturally appropriate child care. Jamie Tramte Brassfield, early childhood manager at FCR N.E.W., said one group has now completed all of the classes, and they are hoping to offer the classes to more Somali women in the future.