Focus Area: Early Childhood

Grant Amount: $10,000

Located in Minneapolis. Baby’s Space is a nationally accredited, 4-Star Parent Aware-rated child development center for families living in poverty. Founded in 2000 as an age 0-3 childcare facility for families in the Little Earth of United Tribes development and surrounding Phillips neighborhood of south Minneapolis. The majority of staff are Native American, and the program is highly culturally responsive. It offers child and family services from pregnancy to 3rd grade, including year-round, full-day childcare and public K-3 education through Tatanka Academy.

Grant supports the program Building Parent and Caregiver Capacity, which builds parents’ capacity to recognize the traumatic impact of persistent community violence and poverty on their child’s brain development, social-emotional growth, and academic achievement, as well as their emotional awareness of historical trauma. Through intensive practice, parents learn specific skills for how to take care of themselves emotionally, which enables them to parent differently than the way they may have been parented.