(upbeat music) - Hello, and welcome to "Prairie Pulse."

Coming up later in the show, we'll see episode two of our Black History of the Northern Plains Series.

But first joining me now is Eddie Sheeley, the President of Choice Bank in West Fargo, here today to talk about their involvement in childcare centers.

Eddie, thanks for joining us today.

- Thanks for having me.

- Well, as we get started, tell the folks a little bit about yourself and maybe your background.

- Sure, so originally from West Fargo, born and raised.

Went to NDSU.

Met a great lady here, and raising our family in West Fargo.

I've been working at Choice Bank for 22 years now, actually today.

- Oh, all right, well, congratulations.

- [Eddie] Thank you.

- As I said, we're here to talk about Choice Bank's involvement in, well, it's 18 childcare centers I understand across the state.

Tell us about this and the Choice Bank Childcare Grant.

- So it's a $10,000 grant that childcare centers can apply for, and we've targeted our rural communities.

Choice serves 12 different counties throughout the state of North Dakota.

And so we've had, it's open to any childcare center that's a licensed daycare throughout the state that are in those 12 counties.

- Okay, well, so there you go.

I was about to say, where are the daycare centers located?

So it's, they have to be in the county of a bank, a county you serve.

- Correct, yeah.

- Okay.

What inspired Choice Bank to create this program?

- Yeah, I think that just goes to the high percentage of family budgets that are taken up from childcare costs.

You're looking at anywhere from eight to 19% throughout the country of a family's budget that they're spending on childcare, which is extremely high.

You know, that can be anywhere from $5,300 to 17,100, on an annual basis for a family's budget.

So, I mean, even in Cass County, that's at 12.8% today, so it's just such a high percentage of family's budget, and we wanted to make sure that there was childcare service available and affordable childcare service.

- Now, you know, so let's talk a little bit about improvements that have been made with the program and improvements, I guess, with those childcare centers.

Can you tell me about some of these?

- Yeah, what's fun about it is they can apply for any one time costs or improvements to facilities.

So it can be anything from a new startup, and so hopefully maybe get a new daycare center into a community.

So one time startup costs.

It can be for playground equipment.

It can be to fix a sidewalk for safety purposes.

It can be to add a fence for safety for childcare centers.

The only thing that is excluded from the list are your reoccurring payments like a mortgage payment or rent or utilities.

- Yeah, so what about some of the improvements that, of course, here I've got one, you know, Hazen's Energy Capital Cooperative Childcare Center.

- Yeah, that was an exciting one.

They ended up remodeling one of their classrooms with the funding.

- Yeah, and when you say remodeling a classroom, what, you know, what can they do with that?

I mean, does that just mean new paint or do they get new activity things or what?

- Yeah, it could have been equipment or toys, but in that case it was extremely dated.

And so you're updating everything, cabinets, flooring probably doing some painting, maybe even ceilings.

- Yeah, I do know that the legislature, the governor has been involved a little bit with this.

Do y'all get involved at all with the legislature, legislation on daycare centers?

Do you watch that or pay attention to that?

- Yeah, we certainly try to.

Especially now when they're in session, there's a lot of conversation going on around how we help childcare centers, and there's a lot of good ideas out there.

This was our way of helping where we saw the need be the most, just specifically into our rural communities.

But I think wherever you go, even our large cities as well, you know, large cities too we're having that need for childcare help.

So just recently there was a survey done in West Fargo, and it was four to 500 people that had filled out the survey.

And this number was staggering to me.

It was 14% of the people that responded would've gone back into the workforce if they weren't watching a kid at home because there wasn't childcare available for them.

And so if we're helping fix the childcare issue, we're helping our workforce issue as well because if we have affordable childcare, we can have people come back into the workforce which is the number one issue for businesses locally, is our workforce.

- I think you just, may have answered part of my next question, but when did your organization, how long have you been doing this and why did you get involved?

- Yeah, we've been talking about it for a number of years.

I think we started formulating the program back in 2021, and then in 2022 was our first year executing the program.

So as you mentioned, we had 18 different childcare facilities that we had donated to, and that totaled $150,000 last year.

And so, we'll see where the program goes this year.

The daycares can apply on an annual basis, and so it's not a one time donation that they can get and then they're not eligible again.

They're eligible on an annual basis to reapply for that.

- So can you talk more, a little bit about the struggles that child care centers are having in North Dakota, and you know, parents are struggling cause I know sometimes they talk about they're looking for childcare even before they get pregnant.

- [Eddie] Yeah.

- Can you talk about some of that and maybe especially in smaller communities and what you're hearing and?

- Yeah, it's, well, if you're gonna raise a family, you know the number one thing you're looking at is probably housing, and childcare is maybe a close second.

Maybe even jumping into first because there's such a lack of childcare service.

So if you're in a small community, and, you know, you've got a job, so you've got employment worked out.

If they don't have childcare there, where are you gonna go?

You're going to another town, and that really hurts the local economy there because you got commute time.

Also, you're spending money in a different city where if they had childcare there, you're more than likely to to stay longer in that community.

So you're seeing, you know, the local economies of our rural towns go down if they don't have sufficient daycare.

- Yeah, you've talked about the expenses that are eligible, and I guess some that were ineligible like the mortgage or rent, ongoing expenses, but, you know, how difficult is it to apply and meet the criteria for what you're looking for?

- Yeah, I think it's really easy to apply.

You can go to Bank with Choice/Childcare grant and you can see all the criteria in there.

So it's got eligible uses and then ineligible uses for you as well as an easy application.

And then we'll typically take about 30 days to make a decision.

We've got three different funding rounds throughout the year, and the first one coming up is a deadline of April 30th.

- Okay, tell us a bit about Choice Bank.

How many branches do you have and how was this organization founded?

- Yeah, about 20 locations throughout North Dakota, Minnesota.

And so we service our Midwest community, North Midwest community, and it started back in '01, and it was Grafton, Walhalla, and Langdon and West Fargo had merged in to become Choice Bank.

So about about $150 million in assets at that time.

And we've grown throughout our communities, throughout the state, North Dakota and Minnesota.

Added in Minnesota in the Minneapolis region back in 2018.

So very excited to service our local economies here.

- Yeah, and you talked about, going back to childcare centers, you talked about $150,000 last year.

You know, how much money have you already put into this year and is there a limited, I guess I'm wondering is there a limit that you have to how much you're gonna give or is it just based on case by case application?

- Yeah, I think it's case by case.

I don't think we've set the limit on how much we'll donate.

You know, it all depends on the need.

So if we see a growing need, we'll consider increasing what we did last year if we have the right amount of applications come in.

- Yeah, so my point was you said there's 18, but other childcare centers can apply for grants in 20, even in '23.

- [Eddie] Absolutely.

- So.

- Yep, new ones and existing ones can apply again.

- Oh, they can apply again?

- Sure, they sure can.

- Okay.

- Yep.

- Well, you mentioned a deadline, but can you talk about the various rounds of applications and the deadlines?

I mean, is it every three months, every four months?

What is it?

- Yeah, it's, I wanna say, so we've got April 30th, and I think we have June 30th as the next one.

And then October 31st is the third.

So three rounds every year, and we plan on doing that again in 2024.

- Can a daycare center only receive one grant a year or is that open for interpretation?

- [Eddie] One grant per year.

- Okay.

- Yep.

- And again, are these funds specifically for rural day cares or cause you talk about you have a branch in Fargo or can a daycare in Fargo apply for the grant?

- Just rural.

So it is a community that has a population of less than 10,000, and we just saw that there was a bigger need there.

You've got a lack of resources and a bigger need in your rural communities.

- I can understand that.

So again, what goes into the selection process now that people are probably paying attention of who can apply when choosing daycare providers for the grants besides rural?

- Yeah, you know, they, it's really simple.

We try to keep it easy and not, you know a hefty selection process there.

It's gotta be licensed in the state of North Dakota, gotta be in one of the counties that Choice Bank serves.

And we've got 12 counties throughout the state, and the population needs to be less than 10,000.

- So if you meet that criteria, I think I would be applying for a grant with these folks cause I do know daycare providers could use the help wherever they can.

What's been the reaction so far from the various centers who have received the funds?

- Been extremely happy, and we're happy to be able to do it.

You know, at Choice, we wanna be more than just a bank.

We invest in the communities that we serve not only by donating but by volunteering.

We have a high amount of volunteer hours that we do throughout the community.

And in addition to having programs like this childcare program, we've got other programs as well like our Wishing Well program to try to give back to the communities that we serve.

- Okay, what kind of satisfaction does this program give you and your employees at the bank?

Can you kind of put it into words and why an effort like this is important to Choice Bank?

- Yeah, we wanna better the places that we live, work and play.

And by doing the childcare grant, we know that it's such a big need in our communities.

So we're meeting a need and possibly adding some parents back into the workforce.

So it might help twice, depending on how it works out.

- Yeah, okay.

Let's talk maybe a little bit about these, the work daycare providers do.

I know from what I hear they have trouble hiring employees, keeping employees, but yet how tireless, difficult and important the work is.

Can you talk some about daycare workers?

- Yeah, you know, I think when you think of daycare workers right away, it's the wages.

You think about wages and recently in the last, what, 12, 18 months, we've seen a pretty big increase in wages from a lot of different jobs, and daycare providers were, you know, maybe on the lower end of that.

And that's forcing expenses higher for day cares.

And so I think that's what they're trying to figure out at a legislature's level.

How do they help out, you know, these daycare centers with the high cost of hourly wages for staff?

How do you keep them, how do you attract them?

- So with this grant, can it be used for recruiting or wages at all?

- Yeah, actually it can.

So we've got a one-time salary that it can be used for.

It can also be used for a one-time HSA contribution.

And so there's a lot of one time expenses that it can be used for.

Just can't be used for reoccurring.

And so if they're using it to help with, you know, a bonus incentive to try to get an employee in, that'll help, you know, stabilize that daycare and hopefully, you know, every person that's added, the daycare will be able to add so many kids.

I don't know if it's six or seven I thought that was the number, but every daycare provider that they have, they can have an additional six, seven kids depending on the size of the organization.

- Yeah, we talked about some of the improvements at Hazen's, but were there other improvements that have been made that you know about and what people have done with the grant?

- Yeah, I think it's just a wide range.

We talked about 'em a little bit.

The one time expenses, the facility remodels.

There's been a parking lot, a sidewalk repair like I said for figuring out safety issues and then purchasing some equipment.

As we know, kids go through equipment pretty, pretty fast.

They get worn out, so they can get some new playground equipment for kids, for example.

- Yeah, well in rural areas, you know, it's got to be harder, and I understand your reasoning for the grants there, but those daycare providers, you know, we talked about how they reach out to your bank for this, and you're making it easy for 'em, it sounds like.

I haven't seen anything to really pick on or to question about this, but, so they really just need to go to the website and ask for the grant, but so all they have to have is a reasonable request.

- Yeah, absolutely.

We try, like I said, we try to make it really easy for them to apply and we want the program to continue to be successful, and we'll run a program like this as long as the the need is out there.

You know, I don't think I threw this stat out there, but you know, I think it was North Dakota Aware had a stat that we've got 120,000 roughly kids that need childcare throughout the state, and our licensed daycares right now only have the capacity for about 36,500.

And so as long as that need stays out there, we plan on having this program available.

- Well, and you just answered my next question cause, yeah, how long do you hope to continue this?

What other programs are Choice Bank, what other programs do you have that you work on?

- Yeah, I mentioned the Wishing Well program a little bit earlier.

So that's a program that you can apply for online or in person.

We've got physical Wishing Wells in all of our locations.

So you can bring a child, a kid in there or a family member, and that's for anything that you see that there's a need in the community.

Like maybe you've got, you know, a neighbor down the street that they got cancer or got into a bad accident.

It could be a family member.

It can be a friend, but we'll donate up to $1,000, and we review those wishes on a monthly basis.

And so at any time you can put a wish in, and we'll take a look, and the Wishing Well's just another way of us actually asking the general public what are the needs.

So instead of Choice Bank employees seeing what needs are out there, we're asking everybody what are the needs that the community has?

And they tell us, and we review and if it fits we'll donate.

- So do they physically come in and fill out something and put it in a wishing well or?

- Some do, yeah.

- Some do, but they can do it online also.

- Correct, yeah.

- Okay.

- Yeah, so same thing, Bank with Choice/Wishing well.

- Huh, well, Eddie, what's the the best part of your job?

- That's a great question.

I've been a business banker my whole career, and so working with clients, and so, you know, when we get to a closing, and we've worked so long for someone's, you know, investment, the satisfaction of getting to the finish line and helping them accomplish a dream through an investment that they're making.

- Well, Eddie, again, we've covered a lot of ground, so if people want more information about the Wishing Well or the daycare grants, childcare center grants, I guess I'll call 'em.

Where can they go?

Who can they contact?

- Yeah, you can go right to our website or you can contact myself or a Choice Bank staff member at any of our locations can answer more questions.

- Well, Eddie, thank you so much and good luck with the program.

- Thanks for having me.

- All right.

Stay tuned for more.

(upbeat music) In episode two of our "Black Histories of the Northern Plains" series, we meet the Bonga family who settled near Duluth in the Leech Lake area of Minnesota.

We also learn about the life of a slave named York.

(upbeat music) - [Matt] The first African Americans in the Northern plains were a family named Bonga and a man named York.

Though the prairies they ventured through were ostensibly free lands, they were brought to the frontier by fur traders and explorers as enslaved men and women.

Here in the disputed waters and lands between indigenous America and European empires, they navigated the uncharted borders of slavery and freedom.

- When Meriwether Lewis and William Clark's Core of Discovery returned to St. Louis from the Pacific Ocean, September 23rd, 1806, they returned as national heroes.

The journey of exploration they'd begun more than two years prior and one of the crowning achievements of the young United States of America had finally come to an end.

That evening Lewis wrote in the letter to President Thomas Jefferson, "It is with pleasure that I announce to you the safe arrival "of myself and party."

However, this triumphant return would've been bittersweet for at least one member of the party, the man known as York, who was once enslaved by William Clark.

York had made significant sacrifices for the journey.

He'd been forced to leave his wife in Kentucky and suffered serious injuries along the way including frostbite from a bison hunt near Fort Mandan.

York had also made important contributions with the expedition's success with the minor privileges he enjoyed.

He carried firearms and provided a sizable portion of the party's food.

He even voted with the party to determine the location of a winter camp, and he served as an effective diplomat with indigenous people who had never seen a black man before.

To York, the assurance of civilization in St. Louis, Missouri marked a return to the slavery he'd been accustomed to before the expedition as William Clark had made no indication of freeing him and wouldn't do so for at least another five to 10 years.

I'm Troy Jackson II with "Prairie Public."

Our narrator is Matt Olien, and this is "Black Histories of the Northern Plains."

(upbeat music) - [Matt] Black history in the United States begins in Africa with the institution of slavery.

Between the 16th and 19th century, more than 12 million African men, women and children were captured and taken to ports in the Gulf of Guinea where they were loaded onto European ships and sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to the new world.

The 11 million people who survived the journey were forced into a lifetime of labor, working primarily in the agricultural production of sugar, cotton, rice and tobacco for European and then American markets.

Most were sent to plantations in South America and the Caribbean.

Roughly half a million were taken to North America.

As chattel slaves, these people and their descendants were deprived of their humanity and basic rights and treated as property that could be bought, sold, traded, and inherited.

Jean and Marie Bonga were two of these descendants and likely the first in their families to gain freedom in the new world.

The Bongas were French African, born into slavery in the middle of the 18th century and most likely taken from the French colony of Martinique through Montreal to the Straits of Mackinac.

By 1782, they were enslaved on the Great Lakes by Captain Daniel Robertson, the British Canadian commander of Fort Mackinac.

In 1787, the Bongas were freed.

They opened a tavern on Mackinaw Island where they married and raised four children and got themselves into the Great Lakes fur trade.

Sometime after Jean died in 1795, Marie and her three youngest children returned to Montreal.

Their oldest son Pierre moved west further into the fur trade he had come to know.

He appears in the records of Northwest Company Traders between 1795 and 1806 as a servant, interpreter and fur trader.

He later worked for the American Fur Company.

In 1800, he traveled to the Red River Valley with one of the Traders.

Journal records mention Pierre riding a corralled bison and delivering a sound beating to a competing fur trader who threatened to kill him.

Pierre also found family and community, marrying into the Pillager Band of the Chippewa and raising several children.

In Pembina on March 12th, 1800, his wife, Ojibwe K gave birth to their daughter Blanche.

Local fur trader Alexander Henry recorded the occasion as the first new fruit in this fort and a very black one.

She is believed to be the first African American born in North Dakota.

Her younger brother, George, delivered the following year is believed to be the first African-American born in Minnesota.

Pierre appears to have lived comfortably with Ojibwe K and their family until his death near Fond Du Lac in present day Wisconsin around 1830.

Their children found wealth and prominence too.

Sons George and Steven worked as traders, guides and voyagers with the American Fur Company.

Fluent in English, French, and native languages, they also worked as interpreters during treaty negotiations between the US government and Ojibwe leaders.

Their signatures can be found on the 1837 Treaty of St. Peters, the 1847 Treaty with the Pillager Band of the Chippewa, and the 1867 Treaty with the Chippewas of the Mississippi.

By the end of the 19th century, a sizable number of Bonga descendants, perhaps more than 100 lived in Minnesota around Leech Lake.

- While York occupies a far more prominent position in American history than the Bongas, his life after the Core of Discovery is a mystery, if not a tragedy.

Living in St. Louis after their return, York's relationship with Clark soured.

It became clear he wouldn't be granted freedom.

In response, he was beaten and jailed.

If Clark's letters served as any indication, York was regularly threatened to be sold down the Mississippi River to a more violent slave holder.

Legend claims that York eventually found his way to Wyoming and lived among the Crow or lived out his later years in the taverns of St. Louis.

Most historians believe York was eventually granted freedom and worked in freight hauling goods.

In 1832, Clark admitted that he freed York, but claimed that York had attempted to return to his old master before dying of cholera.

Given the self-serving embellishment of William Clark's story, some historians believe York never got his freedom at all.

I'm Troy Jackson II for "Prairie Public."

Thanks for watching.

(upbeat music) - Well, that's all we have on "Prairie Post" for this week.

And as always, thanks for watching.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Funded by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4th, 2008, and by the members of "Prairie Public."