Poverty Awareness This Month and All Year Long

Jeremiah Program’s mission is to disrupt the cycle of poverty for single mothers and their children, two generations at a time. Why single moms? Because nearly 30% of single mothers and their children live below the poverty line — and 1 in 3 people who experience poverty as children will continue to do so as adults.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

This Poverty Awareness Month, we’re doing what we’ve been doing every day for nearly 30 years: uplifting the needs of families experiencing poverty and applying and advocating for two-generation solutions.

JP is focused on generational poverty, which means that at least two generations of a family are born into poverty. These conditions severely limit a family’s ability to reach economic mobility and pursue their dreams. Existing solutions to disrupt generational poverty often fail to address the unique and complex challenges families face — and they tend to center on either the mother or the child. At JP, we curate a support structure that allows a mother to drive investments in key economic mobility levers for herself, her children, and her community — disrupting generational poverty at three levels.

College Access and Career Support

When women enter JP, they meet regularly with a family coach who helps them set educational goals and choose a career path. Individualized coaching increases college retention, career readiness, and long-term economic prosperity.

While higher education is not the sole solution for inequity in our country, it remains the greatest lever of economic mobility. For each level of education they attain, single mothers are 32% less likely to experience poverty.

At JP, we curate a support structure that allows a mother to drive investments in key economic mobility levers for herself, her children, and her community.

Quality Early Childhood Education

The education of young children is also foundational to our two-generation approach to disrupting poverty. Children in early childhood education programs are less likely to repeat a grade, more likely to graduate from high school, and are higher earners in the workforce later in life.

Safe, Affordable Housing

Housing is a core lever that enables JP moms and their young children to grow as families, succeed as students, and prepare for their careers. High housing costs, low wages, and lack of affordable housing options are all serious roadblocks to families’ paths to economic mobility and their dreams. These are the principal reasons we offer JP families affordable housing in our five residential campuses and work with community partners in our non-residential locations to ensure that each family has safe housing in place.  

Empowerment, Leadership, and Career Training

Empowerment and Leadership (E&L) is a course every mom takes to begin her JP journey. Once enrolled, moms regularly participate in workshops to build capacity in career exploration, financial literacy, positive parenting, healthy living, and more.

Our 2023 study on E&L shows that the course is instrumental in helping single moms experiencing poverty cast aside the shame placed on them and feel a greater sense of agency in changing their futures.

Supportive Community

Another key facet of E&L and JP’s programming as a whole is the supportive community and sisterhood moms find here. The relationships JP moms develop assure them that they are not alone and help them problem-solve together as they work toward economic mobility.

We know that JP’s work effectively supports moms experiencing poverty to make positive changes for themselves and their families, and we are actively engaged in influencing the broader conditions that shape the lives of JP families and the communities they call home. That’s why we are working alongside partners, policymakers, and community leaders to address systemic barriers while supporting our mothers and their children to succeed.

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