Ruaa Khaleefa came to Iowa four years ago after leaving Iraq and had an initial plan in mind. After attending Des Moines Area Community College English language classes, Khaleefa hoped to open her own in-home child care business. Soon, she found Lutheran Services of Iowa. 

“When I went to LSI and I saw the staff, the organization, I felt like this is what I want to do. I want to help other people more than opening my own business and being at home,” Khaleefa said. “I love to connect with people, I love talking with them.” 

Khaleefa joined LSI as a registration associate, helping clients embarking on their own dreams of child care entrepreneurship to fill out paperwork for the Department of Human Services. After one year, LSI named Khaleefa as the child care specialist on staff to help guide new Des Moines residents in opening their own child care business, mostly based at home. This year, Khaleefa received the Emerging Leader Award by the Iowa Association for the Education of Young Children for her role assisting LSI clients in child care. 

What is your role at Lutheran Services of Iowa?
We work with [individuals] who want to host child care, they want to work from home. Our clients are refugees or immigrants. We help them with language [interpretation] on the application, and with preparing the house to be their [place] of business. We help that child care provider to be a child care provider. … We help them with time sheets, we help them with interpretation if they need it for their business or child care. We still connect with other clients from previous years.

What are the challenges facing these young businesses, especially in a pandemic?
When I’m working with refugees and immigrants, the challenges are the language first. And the rules — in their country, it’s different from here. Here, we have a lot of rules. It’s good, and good for the kids — but for them, it’s hard to understand. We try the best we can to explain the rules here. … If you do any changes, you should inform the [Department of Human Services]. 

Some of our child care providers stopped work for a while because they are afraid of COVID-19, but some of them are still working. Some of them [would] work, but there are no kids because all of the families stay home. The good thing is they still receive the option to work — I think it’s helped that the DHS gives them a grant every month since April. All of my clients accept discounts for essential workers, so the DHS made this grant for [businesses] who will discount for essential workers. 

How can the community support LSI’s work assisting these child care entrepreneurs?
We have a lot of partners helping with donations and information — some refer the clients for us. We have partners who make this program possible, like Polk County, Early Childhood Iowa, United Way of Central Iowa and the Iowa Women’s Foundation, as well as many individual donors. 

We provide for each client $100 worth of safety [kits], like a fire extinguisher or first-aid kits. … Donations help provide all of this to each client, and for their interpretations. 

What is the best piece of advice that you’ve received in your career?
Respect the clients, and respect each other. That is the one rule. To be united, we should respect each other. When you go to LSI, we have [four] rules: unity, respect, grow, empower.