With funding and support from Louisville Metro’s Office for Women, nonprofits in Louisville are helping immigrant and refugee women meet the need for child care in their communities. The Strengthening the Village project launched in 2023 with a $10,000 grant from the U.S. Conference of Mayors. Since then, 18 women from Cuba and the Democratic Republic of Congo have opened certified child care businesses. Four other women from Rwanda are in the process of earning their state certifications.
Gretchen Hunt, director of the Office for Women, said Louisville doesn’t have enough affordable, accessible child care to meet families’ needs. And she said immigrant and refugee families face even more barriers.
“You may have a number of barriers because of language, because of culture, because of transportation,” she said. “You may often work in a job that’s maybe third shift, so it’s harder to find child care.”
Hunt said these families also struggle to find child care that is “culturally and linguistically accessible to them.”
According to a 2024 report from the nonprofit Metro United Way, there are only enough child care facilities in Louisville to serve about half of local families with two working parents. This hinders early learning and the local economy.
The Kentucky Center for Statistics reported that just 38% of children in Louisville were ready for kindergarten in August 2023.
The average cost of child care for one toddler was $8,170 annually in 2020. That was about 15% of the total income for the average family in Jefferson County that year. And when families can’t find open child care spots they can afford, some parents choose to drop out of the workforce to stay home.
Hunt said the Strengthening the Village project aims to address the mismatch in available child care and the growing need, while empowering immigrant and refugee women to earn money for their families.
“This is not just increasing or shifting pathways for people who are already working, this is really putting men and women to work for the first time in our community,” she said.
The nonprofit Community Coordinated Childcare, known as 4-C, and See Forward Ministries are partnering with Louisville Metro on the project.
See Forward Ministries works with immigrants and refugees, mainly people from east African countries, to navigate life here in the United States.
Eunice Mukaz, the programming director for See Forward, said many women come to America from east Africa without their partners, and they struggle to find employment because they have no one to watch their kids.
Mukaz said the childcare program has allowed women to find a level of self-sufficiency.
“It’s opening these opportunities for them they didn’t even think they would have, because they didn’t go to school here,” Mukaz said. “It gives them the American dream that they’re looking for. They can work and do something without asking for help for someone else.”
Opening a home child care business isn’t easy.
Trish Kite-Hannon, a family child care specialist with 4-C, said operators have to undergo CPR training, background checks and home inspections in order to get certified by the state.
The home may also need to be rezoned, which requires approval from the city. Rezonings can be more difficult if the person is renting their home and they have to ask permission from a landlord.
“Many refugee families are nervous to ask,” Kite-Hannon said. “So we empower them to know they have the right to make those asks.”
Kite-Hannon said one of the early challenges to launching the Strengthening the Village project was the language barrier. Many of the immigrant and refugee women who expressed interest in opening a facility didn’t speak English. So, 4-C relied on grant money to cover translation services for program and training materials.
The grant money — $10,000 in seed funding from the U.S. Conference of Mayors and $30,000 from the city — has also helped cover the cost of required trainings.
Kite-Hannon said it’s a relatively small price tag for a big pay off. She said she recently received a call from a woman who 4-C had been helping. She just passed the final inspection she needed to get certified in Kentucky.
“She couldn’t even talk, she was crying so hard,” Kite-Hannon said. “She worked so hard to open that child care center … It was such a beautiful space.”
Once a business is certified by the state, it can receive federal child care subsidies, bringing new money to the state that was previously left on the table.
The Strengthening the Village program is open to all immigrants and refugees, although so far only women have gone through the process.
In 2025, Kite-Hannon said they want to reach more people in Louisville who are interested in opening new child care facilities. And they plan to offer ongoing training and professional development for the women who’ve already launched their business.
