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Child care services for eligible NMTI student parents
The Northern Marianas Technical Institute has worked out an arrangement with the Department of Community and Cultural Affairs’ Child Care Development Fund that would allow NMTI’s eligible student parents to avail of the CCDF’s child care services so they can better focus on pursuing a trades education.
The child care services will be available for NMTI’s upcoming school year, which begins on Aug. 18. Those interested in seeing if they and their children are eligible for the CCDF’s services can pick up CCDF applications at NMTI’s administrative office in Lower Base.
According to NMTI’s student services and curriculum coordinator Meena Benavente last Thursday, CCDF’s services are available for children from the ages of 6 weeks to 12 years old. Benavente said the finer details of the NMTI-CCDF arrangement are still in the works, but was able to share to the best of her knowledge that CCDF has its own dedicated child care facilities, and that relatives of student parents can go through a process to apply to become official caretakers of the children.
Benavente and most of NMTI’s staff are parents themselves and see the importance of ensuring that children are taken care of while parents go to work and/or school.
“A lot of the staff here at NMTI are parents, so we really understand the importance of making sure that our children are under care. We still have a bit more information to learn to be very familiar with [the CCDF’s] program and services. …Students who are parents or members in our community who know a student who has children going to NMTI can definitely ask for the [CCDF] application to see their eligibility,” said Benavente.
