Being a single mother is hard enough with just one set of hands to raise the children and run the household. Unfortunately, the hardships of single moms do not stop there. Single mothers struggle more financially compared to their married counterparts, making it much more difficult to manage everyday tasks. That is where the Women to Women Foundation comes in.
According to the foundation, the single mother earns an income of only $26,000 on average, whereas the average married couple earns about $84,000. The single mother is already at a $58,000 disadvantage. Without these extra tens of thousands of dollars, a single mother may struggle not only with juggling the children and their activities, but also with making ends meet and providing for her kids.
The Women to Women Foundation seeks to provide “women opportunities for education, mentoring, and growth, which will empower them to strengthen their families, their children and their communities.” The foundation relies on generous donations to be able to fund these opportunities to help women. So far, the foundation has positively impacted over 500 women.
“In the last year alone, through the generous donations of our supporters, we were blessed to endow two new scholarships for single mothers. This year, we have a goal to double those donations so we can keep establishing scholarships for women in need that will perpetuate for years to come,” according to the foundation.
Anyone can donate to the cause, and 100 percent of all donations go directly to scholarships for single mothers. In the past years, these donations were able to fund scholarships to single mom Crystal Minnick and Jennifer Call Holbrook.
Minnick received the scholarship back in 2015 after enrolling in a Social Media Marketing program. She was working at an unsatisfying job and needed to support her five-year-old son. Though she was nervous about paying for school and rent, she decided to follow through with her education and considered the scholarship “a blessing.”
“This scholarship gave Crystal the peace to focus on her education and avoid taking on any debt,”
according to Minnick’s article on the foundation’s blog. This scholarship that gave Minnick the opportunity to earn a degree changed her and her child’s lives forever.
The Women to Women Foundation has also changed Holbrook’s life with a scholarship to advance her education. Although Holbrook was doing alright with her Associate’s Degree for about 14 years, that all changed when she became widowed in 2014. She decided to go back to school and obtain an additional degree to provide her son with a better life.
Holbrook went to school for a certification in Medical Coding before receiving the scholarship. “[The Single
Mother Scholarship] has been a huge blessing in being able to get my education without going into debt,” according to Holbrook’s article on the foundation’s blog. “I have been able to get the skills necessary to get a better job to support myself and my son.”
Although it can be difficult for a single mother to decide to go back to school to support her children, the Women to Women Foundation and their Single Mother Scholarship enable women to pursue higher education and make it a little easier to improve the livelihood of themselves and their children.
Featured Image by University of the Fraser Valley on Flickr
Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)
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