Photo: Lina Kivaka | Pexels
To help address the shortage of child care in rural Maine, a nonprofit community development financial institution is running a business incubator that teaches how to run a child care business. Through its six-month Child Care Business Lab, Coastal Enterprises, Inc., provides entrepreneurs with the tools to start a small business. Since the lab launched in March 2020, 11 new businesses with 144 child care slots have opened and several more are in the final stages of being licensed, with another 100 child care slots expected in the next six months. CEI developed the program after noticing that rural areas had higher rates of unemployment, poverty, part-time and part-year employment, low rates of workforce participation by parents, and a low percentage of child care slots for children, five and under.
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