Vacant Lot in Newark Made Award-Winning Learning Center

Praise for Maher Charitable Foundation, Childcare Center in Clinton Hill

NEWARK, NJ — For two decades, the property in Newark’s South Ward was vacant land designated to become a city high school that was never built.

That was until March of last year when the Clinton Hill Early Learning Center opened on Demarest Street — a $17 million childcare and community center backed by the Maher Charitable Foundation — which this month was awarded a Smart Growth Award by New Jersey Future.

The award recognizes best practices and approaches to building a sustainable and inclusive future in the state.

The building was originally conceived so that infant care providers and toddler and preschool providers could come together in one location, Margarethe P. Laurenzi, executive director of the Maher Charitable Foundation, told TAPinto Newark.

“We knew there was a community need for childcare,” Laurenzi said while walking through the brightly lit hallways of the center. “We knew there was a need for spaces.”

Clinton Hill Community & Early Childhood Center Inc. had been in Newark for about 30 years at other locations, and the social service organization La Casa De Don Pedro — which is the other childcare provider at the center — had a need for space in the South Ward, she said.

The award from New Jersey Future came as a surprise, Laurenzi said. And it has drawn attention to the work of the Maher Charitable Foundation.

“This is an important contribution to the community,” she said. “We think there is a lot of good that philanthropists can do in this state, and we want to lead by example.”

The foundation previously created an infant toddler wing at the Ironbound Community Corporation in Newark’s East Ward. “They desperately needed it. We came through. That was one of the Maher Charitable Foundation’s first projects,” Laurenzi said.

Both these projects, along with the foundation’s work across New Jersey to expand pre-K, has earned the nonprofit praise from the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, which on Tuesday, Oct. 11, presented Brian Maher, the founder and principal of the foundation, with its Community Builder Award. Maher was the CEO of Maher Terminals, a container terminal at the Port of New York and New Jersey.

“The Clinton Hill Early Learning Center reaffirms the Foundation’s fundamental belief that all children deserve early care and education in a high-quality, beautiful setting, close to their homes, where they can be nurtured and grow into successful learners from their earliest educational experiences,” Maher said in a statement.

The learning center in the South Ward provides services to 48 infants and toddlers on its first floor served by La Casa De Don Pedro, and on the second floor 150 children participate in a community-based pre-K program available through the Newark Public Schools enrollment system, Laurenzi said.

“A lot of the work that the Maher Charitable Foundation has done has really been to provide opportunity in underserved districts and under-resourced districts and to really expand educational and, hopefully, economic opportunities to children, who all deserve to have a great education,” she said.

The early learning center on Demarest Street builds on the prior work of the nonprofit Clinton Hill Community & Early Childhood Center Inc.’s other locations on Lyons Avenue, which serves children six weeks to 5 years of age, and Hawthorne Avenue, which serves children ages 2 to 13 years old.

Kim Gaddy, executive director of the South Ward Environmental Alliance, had praise for their community contributions.

“The care and trust they built in the South Ward is authentic and amazing,” Gaddy said. “The Clinton Hill Early Learning Center is a beacon of hope and faith for the past, current and future generations of South Ward families seeking childcare services centered on core educational values that uplift families.”

Joan-Marie Fousheé, director of talent and operations at Clinton Hill Community Action, which manages the center, is pleased with the recent recognition and the ongoing work there.

“It is indeed an honor to see this come to fruition, especially because it’s a lifelong dream for some of the people here in our community,” she said, adding: “It is wonderful that our children will get to have quality childcare in a state-of-the-art building.”

Vacant Lot in Newark Made Award-Winning Learning Center | Newark, NJ News TAPinto