JP Alumni Fellow Story: Marissa Rodriguez
Access to affordable, stable housing is a significant part of JP Alumni Fellow Marissa Rodriguez’s experience and a major point of her advocacy.
The 2024-2025 Jeremiah Program Alumni Fellows are using their experiences, expertise, and stories to advocate for other single moms and their families. Access to affordable, stable housing is a significant part of JP Austin alum Marissa Rodriguez’s experience and a major point of her advocacy. This is her story.
My name is Marissa Rodriguez. My graduation year was 2019. I am from the Jeremiah Program Austin campus. I have two children: Jayden, who is now 12, and Bryan, who is now 10. I am now married, and I gained another son, who is 6. We reside in San Antonio, Texas.
A day in my life was always pretty hectic. I had two children by the age of 16, and so most of my time consisted of school. I attended high school and had to take my children to daycare every day across town. It was on the opposite side of town, and I would go to school all day and then have to rush home pick them up, cook dinner, do homework.
Being 16, I was bouncing from house to house and didn’t have a stable home for my children, and so being able to provide them with a home that nobody could take away from me, that was mine and that was theirs.
I earned my associate’s degree in communications, and shortly after, I graduated Jeremiah Program. Shortly after graduation, I bought my first home at 23. I was thinking back: If Jeremiah wouldn’t have provided those workshops that talked about credit or talked about how to do these life things that nobody else would probably teach us… It helped me pave the way to where I am now. Thinking back to just even being married, something I never thought of, but my time during Jeremiah Program allowed me to heal and allowed me to really see what I deserve, what me and my children deserve.
A few changes that I would like to see for single mothers would be access to affordable healthcare and housing. Even after the program, regardless of where the mother lives, there still should be affordable housing and healthcare. I know, personally, after leaving Jeremiah Program, it was a whole new world that I was being exposed to. I was prepared, but you’re not really prepared until you live it, and so there was a lot of challenges and I worked through them. I kind of dug deep and figured out things that I had learned about myself to keep me going. Again, I think a few changes I’d like to see would be affordable healthcare and housing.
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