Aerial view of tent village constructed by FEMA in Pass Christian, Mississippi. Save the Children worked in partnership with Pass Christian to create a child care center using four of the tent structures that serves more than 40 children a day. Photo credit: FEMA

Like many working parents, those in Pass Christian, Mississippi rely on local child care centers. But the Pass Christian child care center is unlike any other in the nation. Located in the middle of a tent village constructed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), it is one of the first tented child care centers ever to be established in a U.S. emergency setting.

When Hurricane Katrina struck, virtually all of the homes, buildings and businesses in Pass Christian were damaged or destroyed. Five months later, nearly all of the 7,000 residents still live in temporary travel trailers on what is left of their property. Another 200 people live in a FEMA tent camp called “The Village.”

The daycare center located at the tent village in Pass Christian, Mississippi serves more than 40 children a day in this community that was very hard hit by Katrina.

In a few short weeks, FEMA and unemployment benefits will start to come to an end and these families will need to return to work.

“In order for parents to go back to work, they need quality child care,” says Jeanne-Aimee De Marrais, Save the Children’s senior program manager for Katrina. “But in Pass Christian, as in many other coastal communities, the child care centers that families had relied on prior to the storm have all been destroyed.”

Save the Children Establishes First Tented Child Care Center

In the weeks immediately following the Katrina disaster, Save the Children worked in partnership with the city of Pass Christian, the Mississippi Department of Health’s child care licensure office and Ginger Holmes, the owner of the Pass Christian Child Development Center. The result was the first tented child care center to be established in an emergency setting in the U.S.

The brightly painted interiors of the tents depict scenes from a farm, an African safari, and nursery rhymes.

The site, now located in four tents in the center of the town, serves more than 40 children daily - from infancy through pre-school age. De Marrais says the transformation of the standard-issue tents was incredible.

A Model for Other Emergency Situations

De Marrais says the transformation of the standard issue tents was incredible.

“Outside, they look like drab-green Army tents, but when the children step inside they enter brightly painted play spaces, filled with books, art supplies and toys,” she says.

One of the tents constructed by FEMA in Pass Christian, Mississippi used to house families displaced by Hurricane Katrina.

Save the Children’s efforts in Pass Christian were supported by donations of educational materials, an outdoor play structure and child care supplies from the Bright Horizons Foundation and Bridging the Gulf.

De Marrais says the emergency child care tents in Pass Christian serve as a model that could be replicated in other crisis situations throughout the United States. “Save the Children has shown that it is possible to provide high-quality, safe child care in a non-traditional emergency setting. This is an important model that could work to help families any where a disaster hits.”

In addition to its work in Pass Christian, Save the Children’s emergency response programs in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama have provided:

• Emergency Day Care and Safe Spaces – Providing financial and technical support to establish emergency play spaces in shelters and help provide emergency child care for children.

• After School Programs – Working with local community organizations to provide after-school programs and holiday camps for hundreds of children living along the Gulf Coast.

• Psychosocial Interventions – Training 650 teachers, counselors and social workers to present the classroom-based program to more than 8,000 children affected by the storms.

Learn more about our work in the Gulf Coast region