#SHECESSION: Policy, Poverty and The Single Mom

Posted on December 24, 2020January 5, 2021 by David Adusei

#SHECESSION: Policy, Poverty and The Single Mom

with Chastity Lord (Jeremiah Program) & Nicole Mason (IWPR)

AN EXCHANGE BETWEEN TWO CEOS. BOTH WOMEN. BOTH BLACK. BOTH RAISED BY SINGLE MOTHERS.

BOTH DEEPLY FAMILIAR WITH THE IMPACTS OF GENERATIONAL POVERTY.

This important discussion explores how women and single mothers, particularly women of color, are being impacted by the pandemic, the economic fallout, and the existing and potential policy implications that perpetuate poverty.

Hosted by Jeremiah Program, a proven organization dedicated to disrupting poverty for single mothers and their children two generations at the time.

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JP’s 2020 Year End Highlights

Posted on December 21, 2020December 24, 2020 by David Adusei

Jeremiah Program Year End Highlight

-A brief highlight of JP's success through 2020-

Jeremiah Program is making a deeper impact and expanding our reach! 2021 is bright for JP as our alumni moms take a leadership role in shaping how we partner with current and future JP moms and kids.

This year of dual pandemics has called for innovative solutions and new ways of building community. In 2020, no JP mom or child at our residential facilities lost housing in the face of severe job loss and health uncertainty. The support from our community board members, volunteers, donors, and community partners is the foundation of providing the best resources to our families.

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About Jeremiah Program

Jeremiah Program is a nonprofit organization that offers one of the nation’s most successful strategies to help families transform from poverty to prosperity two generations at a time. Using a combination of quality early childhood education, childcare, a safe and affordable place to live, and empowerment and life skills training, the program has impacted the lives of more than 4,000+ single mothers and their children since it was founded 20 years ago. The organization currently serves over 600 single mothers and their young children at seven campuses across the country in Austin, TX; Brooklyn, NY; Boston, MA; Fargo, ND-Moorhead, MN; Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN; and Rochester, MN.

Alumni Fellowship Program Launch

Posted on November 13, 2020December 2, 2020 by Max Auckenthaler

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Kailey McGarvey
kailey@rosengrouppr.com, 516.695.3134

Jeremiah Program Launches Alumni Fellowship
Program to Strengthen Advocacy Errors

-First Fellowship Cohort Includes 13 Jeremiah Program Graduates-

New York, NY (November 11, 2020) — Jeremiah Program, a national nonprofit with a proven model to disrupt cycles of poverty for single mothers and their children two generations at a time, today announced the Jeremiah Program Alumni Fellowship program. This innovative leadership program and network of Jeremiah Program graduates will ensure that the voices of single mothers are included in determining the organization’s programs and policy agenda. The first-ever cohort of fellows includes 13 mothers representing five Jeremiah Program campuses. The Jeremiah Program Fellowship is designed to ensure that alumni have the tools and the social capital to be at the tables where decisions that impact their lives, and the lives of countless other families like theirs, are made - all too often without anyone with that lived experience in the room.

“Proximity matters,” said Chastity Lord, President and CEO, Jeremiah Program. “The disparities between women in poverty and their more affluent peers can only be dismantled by an aggressive investment in women closest to the challenges we are trying to solve. Single mothers can serve as key bridge-builders between decision-makers and communities, designing solutions to the challenges they experience as individuals and helping scale those solutions to meet the needs of their families and broader communities.”

The Fellowship is a 12-month, selective, cohort-based program. Feedback and data from the fellows – women who have faced multiple social and economic barriers and experienced overlapping oppressions – will inform Jeremiah Program’s best practices for helping parents and children break the cycle of systemic poverty, two generations at a time.

“Jeremiah Program moms are superheroes – they have successfully raised children alone and overcome poverty,” said Lord. “The women we serve are often stigmatized, overlooked and underinvested in. It’s time to step aside and give single mothers the mic and the pen to author agendas that will disrupt generational poverty – this new program will help accomplish just that.”

The 2021 cohort of 13 fellows emerged through a rigorous review process of 54 nominations involving the national governing board’s community board of trustees, Jeremiah Program staff members, community leaders, and current participants. The group represents graduates from five campuses with departure dates between 2002 and 2020. As part of the Fellowship, alumni will receive compensation, organizational training, networking opportunities, and hone their leadership abilities.

Angelina Kery is a legal assistant, 2019 graduate of Jeremiah Program’s Boston campus, and part of the 2021 cohort: “I am honored to be able to share my life experience with other women and help Jeremiah Program moms on their own path to success. My goal is to mentor and support single mothers and help them maintain financial stability throughout the pandemic.” “In the midst of COVID-19, single mothers are struggling more than ever before. The gaps in our education, healthcare and childcare systems have never been more evident. Jeremiah Program is committed to helping our mothers share their stories and facilitate them to empower others in the process. Solutions-oriented conversations are necessary to help affect systemic poverty,” added Lord.

For more information, visit www.jeremiahprogram.org.

About Jeremiah Program

Jeremiah Program Announces First Alumni Fellowship Cohort

Posted on November 1, 2020November 6, 2020 by Florian Auckenthaler

Jeremiah Program Announces First Alumni Fellowship Cohort

Thirteen graduate JP moms will help strengthen the organization’s advocacy efforts

Adrienne van der Valk

“I’m hoping to basically give what I’ve received.”

- Angelina Kery

Angelina Kery is a legal assistant at a civil litigation law firm, the mother of two middle-school-aged children, and a 2019 graduate of Jeremiah Program’s Boston campus. Now, as of October 2020, she’s also a member of the first-ever cohort of Jeremiah Program Alumni Fellows.

“It's exciting to be the first group of fellows for this program,” she says. “I'm hoping to mentor new moms, be a support for mothers in the program, and continue being a support to the community.”

Since its founding in 1993, Jeremiah Program has remained connected to moms like Kery who volunteer to lend their expertise in a variety of capacities such as fundraising and speaking on behalf of the organization. But these relationships haven’t been as consistent or as intentional as either JP or the alumni would have liked. Sharin Park, Director of Parent Programming with Jeremiah Program, says the new Alumni Fellowship Program was designed to change that.

“[The program] is about bringing people into the tent of JP and having them stay in that tent,” Park says. “Having them continually engage with us, having them be advocates and talk about us, but also having a value that they gain from it as well.”

As CEO and President Chastity Lord points out, JP moms can offer knowledge and insight that no one else can. They are the experts: in their own lives, in the program, and in the realities of a single mom experiencing in poverty.

“Proximity matters,” Lord says. “The disparities between women in poverty and their more affluent peers can only be dismantled by an aggressive investment in women closest to the challenges we are trying to solve. Single mothers can serve as key bridge-builders between decision-makers and communities, designing solutions to the challenges they experience as individuals and helping scale those solutions to meet the needs of their families and broader communities.”

Lord, Park, and other staff hope that, by regularly engaging with a diverse group of moms at different stages of post-JP life, the organization will improve its programming for families and keep them anchored to a strong and growing network after they leave. Feedback and data from the network will also inform Jeremiah Program’s best practices for helping parents and children break the cycle of poverty two generations at a time.

The First Cohort

Click here to Meet the JP Fellows!

When deciding how to structure the fellowship program, Park says Jeremiah Program staff and leadership felt it was important to open the opportunity to any mother who had gone through the empowerment course, not just those who graduated from JP. This meant that over 500 moms were eligible. Friends, family, staff, board members, and current JP participants and alums nominated 54 moms to the fellowship program; of those, 34 applied. The first-ever cohort of 13 fellows emerged through a rigorous review process involving the national governing board’s community boards of trustees, JP staff members, community leaders, and current JP participants. It’s a diverse group representing moms from five of the six campuses with program departure dates ranging from 2002 to 2020.

Christine Smith is another alum who joined the fellowship program this fall. While she has maintained regular contact with Jeremiah Program since leaving the program in 2006, being a fellow, she says, allows her to contribute expertise she felt was missing when she was going through the program.

“The alumni are a huge untapped resource,” says Smith, who has a master’s degree in family life education and works for the Minnesota Department of Health. “Some of us are moving into national leadership roles. We can really provide some good insight into helping build a program, making it more robust, finding opportunities where there have been barriers. I helped write the Minnesota Family Investment Program manual. I trained that entire welfare system. We need to equip these women on how to navigate the system. That should be part of the orientation process, so they understand and don't have all the barriers that I did.”

“These women are superheroes—people who have the type of backgrounds that some of us do and soar past every statistic that was set for you and your children.”

– Christine Smith

Brittany Block graduated from Jeremiah Program in 2014 and is now a small business owner; like Christine, she stayed involved as a volunteer and is eager to deepen her relationship with the program.

“I've done all kinds of work with Jeremiah and other campuses. It made such an impact on me that I'm just like, ‘Everyone needs this,’” Block says. “I've been saying to Jeremiah for a long time that there needs to be some kind of way for us to loop back to alumni and show donors how our lives have been impacted. Let us tell you how this program has changed our life. Listen to us when we say, ‘this or that was helpful or wasn't helpful.’ They've always been so responsive to the things that I've said.”

“Let us tell you how this program has changed our life and stand up and be experts in your program.”

– Brittany Block

Setting the Agenda

Now that the fellows have been selected, the next phase of the alumni program is determining priorities for the year. Decisions about those priorities, and how to act on them, will be driven by the fellows—women who have faced multiple social and economic barriers and experience overlapping oppressions.

“The women we serve are often overlooked and underinvested in,” says Lord. “It’s time to step aside and give the largest stakeholders in people of color communities—women, often single mothers—the mic and the pen to author policy and agendas.”

Central to the design, according to VP of Parent Programming, Archana Patel, is the goal of centering the voices of single moms in policy conversations. “The fellowship is designed to ensure our alumni have the tools and the social capital to be at the tables where decisions that impact their lives, and the lives of countless other families like theirs, are made - all too often without anyone with that lived experience in the room.”

“The tagline of the fellowship is that they’re ‘experts in their own experience,’” Park says. “Like any alumni initiative, it isn’t powerful unless it’s coming from the alumni.”

While each alumni fellow has the common experience of raising children alone and overcoming poverty, they each bring distinct lenses and skills to their roles. Angelina Kery is committed to helping mothers maintain or regain financial stability as the COVID-19 pandemic runs its course. Christine Smith wants to focus on helping Jeremiah Program’s services become more culturally- and trauma-responsive. Brittany Block would like to help bolster financial literacy and other transitional supports for moms immediately after they leave the program.

Anita is a special education teacher and nonprofit founder who graduated from JP in 2012. Her main priority is promoting healthy relationships and preventing domestic violence, areas in which Jeremiah Program is deeply committed to addressing through a trauma informed lens.

“Domestic violence is beyond domestic. It can follow you wherever you go. And it can be more than just physical. It’s emotional abuse. It can also be financial abuse. I feel that may have been something missed along the way when I was coming through Jeremiah,” she says.

All the moms interviewed for this story identified one important cultural shift that would benefit every Jeremiah Program participant: reducing the judgment, assumptions, and stigma surrounding single motherhood.

“Single mothers are individuals just like anybody else,” says Anita. “Put aside your preconceived perceptions of what you think their reason is to be single. Put aside your preconceived thoughts about anything that would be a stereotype. Every single mother has their own story as far as what happened to get them there. And if you put your bias, thoughts, and opinions out there, instead of finding out who they are ahead of time, what you're really doing is just holding them back. Listen to who they are as individuals.”

Relational Organizing

One way Jeremiah Program is supporting the fellows in telling their stories and moving their agenda forward is by offering training in relational organizing, a tactic focused on empowerment, mobilization, and change-making through community building.

Sharhonda Bossier is an organizer and trainer who specializes in relational organizing with parents in low-income communities. She partnered with JP to offer the training to all 54 alumni program nominees.

“Relational organizing is helping people identify their self-interest, helping them build relationships with other members in their community through very targeted strategic relationship building, strategies, and tactics, helping them identify a challenge or problem they would like to solve, and then helping them figure out how to go about solving that challenge,” Bossier says.

The Jeremiah Program training focused on three things: developing mothers’ storytelling skills; deepening their relationships with the Jeremiah Program organization and with each other; and learning how to leverage their stories and their community to build out an active and effective alumni base.

“What we are talking about is helping women realize their power to affect change in their own lives, the lives of the other members of their family, and in their broader community,” says Bossier. “It’s not just about ensuring that we have advocates and cheerleaders for Jeremiah Program. It's also about investing in these women and teaching them another set of leadership skills.”

Looking to the Future

The group is already putting their skills to use planning a virtual summit in 2021, an inaugural event during which any mother who has ever been a part of Jeremiah Program will have the opportunity to connect with and learn from one another. The content, recruitment, and execution will all be driven by the new fellows. Sharin Park is also hopeful that some members of the cohort will help JP build out programming for mothers who want to become homeowners and that others may choose to share their stories and expertise as empowerment facilitators.

“They've gone through empowerment,” she says. “They've obviously latched on to the curriculum and have applied it to their own daily lives. And, for our new empowerment moms, they could see their identities and life experiences reflected in the facilitators.”

For Anita, putting her own life experience into her work as a fellow is a major motivator.

“My vision is to be able to have other women learn from my mistakes and successes,” she says. “I want them to be able to grow beyond how they've grown within Jeremiah. Even after leaving Jeremiah, I want them to be able to overcome any obstacle, no matter what they've faced.”

For Smith, the appeal of being a fellow isn’t just about the opportunity to give back; she’s also energized by the prospect of joining a unique, resourceful, and inspiring network of women.

“This opportunity is really cool because it brought me back into my community,” she says. “These women are superheroes—people who have the type of backgrounds that some of us do and soar past every statistic that was set for you and your children. You don't find that every day.”

Click here to Meet the JP Fellows!

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New Boston Executive Director

Posted on October 11, 2020October 15, 2020 by Max Auckenthaler

BOSTON, MA (September 23, 2020) —
Jeremiah Program, a national nonprofit with one of the nation’s most successful strategies for transforming families from poverty to prosperity two generations at a time, has appointed Alison Carter Marlow as Executive Director for its Boston campus. Marlow will lead efforts to expand the core elements of Jeremiah Program’s two-generation model to families in the Boston area.

“We are incredibly honored that Alison has chosen to begin her next chapter with our moms and families at Jeremiah Program Boston,” said Chastity Lord, President and CEO, Jeremiah Program. “I am confident that Alison’s leadership will successfully navigate our organization through this shape-shifting moment within our country. Alongside the fear and frustration of the present, there is also hope that these challenging times will give rise to a transformation of the systems that have disadvantaged marginalized families like our JeremiahBoston moms and their children.”

Marlow joins Jeremiah Program from YouthBuild Boston as its Director of Programs and Operations, overseeing the organization’s public grants, reporting and compliance requirements, as well as leading new initiatives and strategic partnerships. Prior to that, she served in many different leadership capacities at Action for Boston Community Development for nearly two decades. Marlow holds a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science with a concentration in Black Studies from Swarthmore College and a Graduate Certificate in Community Human Services Management, Public Administration from Suffolk University, Suffolk School of Management.

Jeremiah Program began working with families in Boston in Fall 2014 with two pilot locations, joining with Endicott College, local housing providers and the YMCA to ensure support for a career-track college education, quality early childhood education, safe and affordable housing, and empowerment training.

_________

About Jeremiah Program: Jeremiah Program is a nonprofit organization that offers one of the nation’s most successful strategies to help families transform from poverty to prosperity two generations at a time. Using a combination of quality early childhood education, childcare, a safe and affordable place to live, and empowerment and life skills training, the program has impacted the lives of more than 4,000+ single mothers and their children since it was founded 20 years ago. The organization currently serves over 600 single mothers and their young children at seven campuses across the country in Austin, TX; Brooklyn, NY; Boston, MA; Fargo, ND-Moorhead, MN; Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN; and Rochester, MN.

We Are Doing More

Posted on August 27, 2020September 14, 2020 by Max Auckenthaler

These have been trying times for all of us, and I hope this note finds you healthy and capturing moments of joy
when possible. The moms, families, and staff of Jeremiah Program are trying to do just that, and we thank you
for your support in making it possible.

None of us know exactly what the future holds, but one thing we know for sure is that our JP moms and their
families need our partnership and support more than ever.

When I last updated you, I promised that
Jeremiah Program would do more in the face of the challenges presented by the pandemic. I also promised that
JP would rise to the occasion of the nation’s much needed racial awakening, all while still providing our proven
programming to single moms and their children who are striving to disrupt the cycle of poverty they’re
experiencing.

And with your help, we are.

JP MOMS ARE THE ARCHITECTS OF THEIR FUTURE

We’re looking at all of our program resources and making sure that our moms are centered in everything we do, acknowledging the trauma, and systemic and structural inequities,
that are woven through their realities as women experiencing poverty. Jeremiah provides the necessary
supports for moms to empower themselves on the path out of poverty, but we know that people who experience
the challenges are the best architects of the solutions. We’re positioning the JP moms to be those architects for
their families and communities, not just recipients of services.

To that end, our moms are bringing a renewed energy to the reimagining of the JP experience, from first
learning of the program to realizing their vision of their futures. This includes participating in a healthy review
of our crucial Empowerment and Life Skills classes and having a voice in how JP navigates the restrictions
caused by the pandemic.

We’re strengthening every aspect of our infrastructure to ensure that we’re able to deepen our program
resources for all of our moms and children, and those that are yet to come. We’re conducting a complete
upgrade across all the JP campuses to a modern network that will provide a faster and more reliable connection
to the Internet, and we’re supplying laptops and tablets to families. This is absolutely critical to ensure that
families are able to fully participate in JP programming, pursue their educations, and work remotely where possible.

MOTHERS LEAD OUR FUTURE

The majority of JP moms are women of color, and they and their JP sisters were already experiencing the
poverty that comes from structural inequities. And now, the country is going through an economic downturn
that has disproportionately seen women lose the low-wage jobs that they absolutely depend on while trying to
complete their educations, and being the sole caregivers for their children as they also go to school at home.

As an organization, we’re bringing race into the conversation about how we go about our work disrupting
poverty and acknowledging that a woman’s race plays a significant role in the type of education she receives,
whether she grows up in poverty and her future economic outlook.

This fall, Jeremiah Program will launch an important new fellowship initiative that will strengthen
our advocacy efforts by building a mobilizing movement comprised of JP alumnae who will push the needle on
educational access, workforce development, and youth advocacy programs for families headed by single mother students experiencing poverty. This project will give voice to women through powerful storytelling and also
support them and their children across their educational and career trajectories.

And we’re developing robust new learning packets for our teachers and moms to use with JP children. We want all of our children to receive culturally
competent lessons that celebrate their greatness and embrace the richness and differences of all communities.

As we continue our commitment to do more, we must remember that generational poverty is not an economic
issue. It is, and always has been, a social justice issue. And we must remember that the path to economic
mobility begins with a degree and a job. With your help, every one of our Jeremiah Program moms will have them.

We’re in this together.

Chastity Lord - President and CEO

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School Supplies Drive 2020

Posted on August 15, 2020August 15, 2020 by Max Auckenthaler

thumbnail_JP_MSP_BacktoSchool_SocialPosts_2

Help us start off the school year right! We have over 60 moms and 55 kids heading back to school in the fall. Regardless of how this year will look for our Jeremiah families, we need your help making sure they are set up for success. We would like to provide every mom and child enrolled in school with a backpack full of supplies, and we need your help!

Click here to see all the ways you can support our families for our School Supplies Drive.

Journey For Hope Gala

Posted on August 2, 2020October 27, 2020 by Florian Auckenthaler

JP_JourneyofHopeGala_SocialPost_1080x1080

Date: Friday, October 30, 2020

Time: Join us virtually beginning at 7:30 PM (CST)

Tickets: Click here to register for a free virtual ticket and bidder number!

Questions? Contact Andrea Williams at awilliams@jeremiahprogram.org or 701-552-5553.

Table Sponsorship: $1,000/8 tickets including reserved table with sign
Individual Ticket: $125/person
Young Professional (under 35): $100/person
Virtual Ticket: Free with online registration

ABOUT JEREMIAH PROGRAM

Jeremiah Program is a nationally recognized nonprofit organization using a proven, holistic approach to
transform families from poverty to prosperity two generations at a time. Through safe and affordable
housing, quality early childhood education, empowerment and life skills training, and support for career-
track education, Jeremiah Program prepares determined single mothers to succeed in the workforce,
readies their children to succeed in school, and reduces generational dependence on public assistance.
After fundraising in Fargo-Moorhead for more than seven years, we broke ground on the Fargo-
Moorhead campus in June 2017 and opened to families in January 2018. Today, the program houses 19 families and 31 children. Our safe and affordable housing can host up to 20 families and our early childhood development center can serve up to 52 children.

Sponsorship opportunities range from $2,500 to $10,000.

Sponsorship information

Click here to view sponsorship opportunities

Silent auction donation information

Click here to view live auction donation information

Questions? Contact Andrea Williams at awilliams@jeremiahprogram.org or 701-552-5553.

Virtual Bullfrog Bash Event

Posted on July 22, 2020November 9, 2020 by Florian Auckenthaler

Date: Saturday, November 14, 2020

Time: 7:00 - 8:00 PM (CST)

ENTER BULLFROG BASH EVENT

ABOUT JEREMIAH PROGRAM

The Bullfrog Bash supports Jeremiah Program's Minneapolis and St. Paul campuse! JP is a vibrant and proven national nonprofit organization that offers one of the country’s leading two-generation (2Gen) strategies for dismantling systemic barriers that have led to an epidemic of poverty among single mothers and their children.

Founded in Minneapolis in 1998, JP has expanded programming to seven campuses across the nation. Through support for a career-track education, safe and affordable housing, quality early childhood education, empowerment and life skills classes, and a supportive community, single moms work to transform their lives, disrupting poverty, two generations at a time.

Sponsorship and live auction information

View sponsorship and live auction opportunities

Questions? Contact Morgan Goepfrich at mgoepfrich@jeremiahprogram.org or (651) 332 5010

We Can and Must Do More

Posted on July 22, 2020 by Florian Auckenthaler

We Can and Must Do More

It’s vital that we ensure that JP’s goals and strategies are aligned with the women and communities that we serve.

We Can and Must Do More

Chasity Lord

June 15, 2020

These last few weeks have been painful and emotional for all of us. We’ve watched as yet another Black man was brutally killed, peaceful protests were disrupted, and rights were infringed upon. It has been a fearful and frustrating time during which we’ve all wondered if we’ll finally see the systemic changes that have disadvantaged marginalized communities for generations. Like many of you, I am hopeful that the last few weeks have been an awakening for our communities and for our nation, and that there’s a renewed commitment to pursuing equity for all people.

Jeremiah Program has worked for more than 20 years to help single moms and their children disrupt the cycle of poverty and has impacted thousands of lives. We should all be very proud of what JP, our families, and our staff have accomplished with the help of our supporters. But we can and must do more.

As Jeremiah enters the next phase of its work, it’s vital that we ensure that JP’s goals and strategies are aligned with the women and communities that we serve and that we, as an organization, live our core values. Beginning immediately, Jeremiah’s Leadership Team will embark upon an assessment of our organizational goals, reflecting on how our values manifest in our language, how we discuss our families and our work, how and with whom we conduct business, how we recruit, onboard and support staff, board and volunteers.

We’ll also reflect on who we’ve been and who we should be, understanding that aspiring to do better does not negate the good work of the past. It does not change our mission of disrupting generational poverty two generations at a time for single moms and their children—in fact I think it will move us closer.

We want to center our moms in everything we do, acknowledging the trauma, and systemic and structural inequities, that are woven through their realities as women experiencing poverty. We also want to ensure that our children are receiving culturally competent lessons that celebrate their greatness and embrace the richness and differences of all communities. As an organization, we need to bring race into the conversation about how we go about our work disrupting poverty, and we need to acknowledge that a woman’s race plays a significant role in the type of education she receives, whether she grows up in poverty and her future economic outlook.

This is equally true for many of our children. To that end, we will examine our programming through a racial and socio-economic lens and begin addressing policies that propagate the systems that negatively impact our moms and families.

All of us are committed to doing the very best we can for our moms and families. I’m confident that this assessment and renewed commitment to the women and children we serve will help us do even more. As Maya Angelou has said, “When we know better, we do better.”