A national nonprofit is bringing its programming to Las Vegas with the hope of breaking the cycle of poverty for single mothers.
Jeremiah Program bills itself as a two-generational approach to supporting women with children by offering them supportive services in housing, familial support, transportation or whatever else is needed as they pursue higher education to improve their economic mobility. It began in Minneapolis in 1993 and has expanded around the country with residential and nonresidential models.
Chastity Lord, president of the nonprofit, said its program in nine cities isn’t reinventing the wheel. Rather, it’s organizing many different education, family and poverty-related services into one spot to cater to single mothers — people who often think of others before themselves.
Jeremiah Program will begin with its first cohort of 100 women and their children this summer. The national team is currently recruiting local executive staff, then potential members will be recruited through partner agencies or can apply directly.
Lord spoke about the nonprofit’s approach, generational poverty and what brought its programming to Vegas. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Las Vegas Review-Journal: How does the program find its mothers and children?
Chastity Lord: We partner with a lot of peer organizations in the area. We’re really looking for organizations that work with single moms — whether it’s houses of worship, whether it’s community-based organizations like the Children’s Cabinet — and those organizations nominate prospective JP moms. In addition to that, we also do a pretty robust recruitment where we’ll have ads on the radio, we’ll send out flyers and partner with community-based early childhood centers. The core of our campaign is: You’re a great mom; become a JP mom, too. A little over a quarter of folks in the Nevada area are actually single parents. One out of every three of them live within or at the poverty line. That was census data that doesn’t even fully absorb the pandemic.
The intro to the program is empowerment and leadership. It’s a good opportunity for a JP mom to be kind of selfish in a way that a mom doesn’t oftentimes get a chance to be. She’s gonna meet once a week within a cohort over a 12-week period going through an empowerment and leadership curriculum. It’s an opportunity for her to be in conversation with the woman she is, the woman she’s been, and the woman she desires to become.
At the end of that 12 weeks, the biggest concrete lever that has come out of that is a blueprint for her life. She’s able to take the time to really start to author what she wants her life to look like for her family, but also for herself. She either decides to go immediately back to school or she has six months to make that decision. That’s where her one-on-one coaching happens. That’s also where the support structures around affordable housing, backup child care, mental health resources and all the wraparound programs that are a part of that.
This program bills itself as a two-generational approach. Can you tell me about what programming is like for the child or children?
A couple of things. One is high-quality summer camp options. A great mom will always bet on her child, not bet on herself. So we try to encourage mom to attend summer courses to be able to keep that college debt down. We pay for kids to go to high-quality summer camps. In addition to that, we provide one-on-one tutoring.
We help a mom prepare for her parent-teacher conference. We help a mom understand what are the different developmental milestones that your child should be leveraging as well. We have really robust partnerships. We’ve been partnering with Acelero in the Las Vegas area. We’ll be doing on-site counseling and support services. We provide mental health services for the kiddos as well. It really is reflective of those needs. Anything that’s a barrier…
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