Sunday, May 06, 2007

SINGLE MOTHERS VILLAGE INTIATIVE






" Single Mothers’ Village. It’s difficult for single mothers to raise children alone. There is an African saying that it takes a village to raise a child. Single mothers can get together and share houses and apartments together with their children to share the childraising and foster community support".


The above passage is another Quote from a blogger name Bronze Trinity. This quote is taken from a post over at Bronze her blog titled 17 plans to help the African diaspora. I have been thinking on ways that I believe could possible help single mothers in thier struggle to provide for thier families. In fact I have been sitting on this particular post for about a year now so here goes.

I believe that a good way to help single mothers would be to create innovative, inspiring and productive Job Training programs that would allow single mothers to be trained in various skills sets while providing free daycare for thier children during thier job training. Now whatever it is they are going to be trained in should be in an area that will allow them to earn enough money to comfortably take care of thier families within the course of a regular work day.


Also thier should be advanced training for those mothers who show extra motivation to improve thier circumstances. I think the single mothers should get some some sort of stipend to be awarded for each class attended by the mothers and that money should be deposited into a personal bank account. Upon Graduation of the program the mothers would be given thier account#s and bank books. In the past I have been a part of Independent Living Programs that provided stipends for the youth in the form of money directly deposited into an individuals bank accounts.

Each year thier is funding for 10,000 school children in Washington DC to participate in summer youth job programs in Washington DC. I know from having worked as a summer youth employee and then later on having supervised them that a lot of these jobs are created solely so that youth will have a chance to earn money. Many of the goverment agencies and private companies that host these youth workers as Job sites do not need them. In fact many of these job sites will accept four or 5 youth workers when they only need 1. What ends up happening is that the youth workers at these sites end up doing and learing very little.

So my attitude is this instead of having youth standing around doing nothing, why not train them and have the youth 16-18 act as child care providers for the children of the mothers who are bieng trained. I remember doing this as my first summer youth job although it was an actual summer day camp for youth of Washington D.C. What I would like to do now is train these youth to provide daycare for single mothers who are in need of or canidates for a job training program such as this one. Such

The schedule would break down something like this.

Thier would be 2 shifts. 7:00-3:30pm 4:00-11:00pm. Here is a sample schedule of a work day.

1) 7:00 -8:00 evaluation and goal setting
2) 9:00-10:00 Internet and Job search training.
3) 10:00-12:00 WebDesign, Nursing, Business, ect, Software learning(tutorials)
4) 12 Lunch
5) 1:00 -3:30 Software training and finacial literacy courses


The second session would repeat the same format as the first sessionn.

Built into these sessions would be competition, collaboration, teamwork, excellence and usefulness. Also the administration of these program should be designed to improve and refine itself with the ultimate goal always bieng progress in the lives of the single mothers who are in these programs. Ladies who show a special skill and leadership should perhaps be funneled back as staff workers of future participants of this program. We must build a sense of empowerment into this program that is relflected by the single mothers and children, the staff workers and the community agencies that particpate in bringing these programs to life. Lastly this program would have a very strong community service spirit mixed in with its application.



Now I know this will cost money but not as much as one might think, a lot of it could be paid for with by money already spent on similar programs that was redirected into these Job training programs for single mothers. We could utilize the services of volunteers and interns to function as staff and advisers.Plus their are already experts working on these very issue, thier are already agency working with single mothers that have gotten great results we should take the best of those ideas to refine this idea and then begin the process of bringing them into extistence.

For Space to run these programs I think we should contact, recreation centers, girls and boys clubs, shcools , churches ect.


We could use the services of Reading is fundemental programs, apply to the Gates Foundation as well as local, state and federal goverment agencies for the extra funds needed for this.

Ill blog more on wholesome and enriching program that could be developed for the children at the daycare. But in the mean time if you know any single mothers or other concerned parties on this matter please invite them to comment with the purpose of refining this idea and working on this issue in a serious way.
Thank You.

6 comments:

credo said...

Okay, I am going to try this again for the third time. Keep losing the post.

Great program and agenda.

I would shorten the training hours to 6. I would offer three days of work training and two days of volunteer work with opportunies for learning news skill.

I would create a website, for listing services that the women would offer for pay.

I would use a core group for creating a day care, lawn care, painting service, catering service.

Each of these areas require little extra tools. Money government provide for job training could be used to purchase the tools.

I would definitely find out the interest of what the women would like to see happen with a program that would meet their needs.

Most of my friends do not blog. I have introduced many to the computers. But most are very private individuals and the fear of identitity thief, being challenged for their thoughts, or spending as much time as I do on the computer is not them.

So I how that my suggestion helps you in your programming.

credo said...

So I hope that my suggestions helps you in your programming.

JustMeWriting said...

Yes...you and Bronze are coming up with some great initiavies. Me being a behavioral health major, I'm SO in tuned to stressing the importance of maintaining good mental health and making sure we change the negative self damaging psyche to one of forward progressive movement; you can do anything once you've got your mind right.

Dangerfield said...

What I need to do is find like minded folks who want to work to have these programs implemented. Thank you for stopping by JMW.

Anonymous said...

Wow, great ideas Mark! I have to think on this for a while. I like the idea of shifting the focus to single mothers and helping them out (single Dads could be included too). I know that there are single mothers who are handling their own out there but there are some, like teenaged mothers who really need help.

"So my attitude is this instead of having youth standing around doing nothing, why not train them and have the youth 16-18 act as child care providers for the children of the mothers who are bieng trained." I really like this. Over the summer there are so many kids with nothing to do but get into trouble. They could be helping with summer camps, daycare centres, and with babysitting! They could be trained to baby sit and do CPR at the beginning of the summer or even while on the job (paid or volunteer). Then they will have learned skills to help them become little babysitting entrepreneurs! One problem parents have is finding babysitters. These kids would be so helpful to them. They would also learn responsibility and the value of a dollar. They would keep younger kids out of trouble and become mentors. Why is a good young person sitting around doing nothing, not earning a dime, and feeling tempted to commit crimes to get money when they could be helping with child care? This is a wasted workforce!

Eddie G. Griffin said...

Great idea. To the babysitting part of the program, I would suggest early childhood development strategies, thereby giving the babysitter an active and interactive role in the baby's development. Babysitting time then becomes productive time in education and self-education. It's good to work on multiple objectives.