Audrey Hartley is the Executive Director of Jardin de los Ninos, a local non-profit organization based in Las Cruces whose mission is to assist homeless children and their families. Hartley discussed her experiences relating to the recent Annie E. Casey Foundation report that found New Mexico ranking 49th in the nation in terms of child well-being.
Hartley is disappointed with the statistic and points out the hard work that Jardin de los Ninos and other organizations put forth to help New Mexico families in poverty.
Hartley said Jardin de los Ninos has a 90 percent success rate for families that graduate from their programs. According to Hartley, by the the time a family is ready to move on, they have a stable job, a place to live, and food on the table.
She called Jardin’s services a “hand-up” not a “hand-out”, providing people in poverty with the tools they need to succeed. Hartley says New Mexico lawmakers need to measure the outcomes of state programs the way Jardin does in order to better understand poverty.
Hartley stressed the importance of the state and local government’s ability to be judicious with funding and identify the many sources of New Mexico’s poverty problem. She says New Mexico needs pay attention to where funding is going and observe the outcomes.
Hartley encouraged legislators to examine the sixteen indicators that measure child well-being in the recent Kids Count study and do a root cause analysis. She believes that once the root causes of poverty in New Mexico are identified, the problem can be better addressed with the appropriate funding.