In the United States alone, there are 13.6 million single parents. Over 9.5 million of which are single mothers. That number represents a group of women who struggle for basic needs for their child and 14% of those women did not complete highschool. Hope for single moms helps those mothers seeking help in furthering their education from finishing highschool and possibly beyond. They also provide general life assistance and pregnancy support for mothers. Located on their site, their goal in life assistance is, “for every student parent to obtain a bachelor’s degree or trade school certification.”

Hope For Single Moms is a faith based non-profit which began from the personal story of their founder, Carla Ludwig. Carla’s daughter became a single mother in her freshman year of college and had to stay home to support her child instead of continuing her college career into what would have been her sophomore year. Carla and her husband saw how much their daughter struggled to provide for herself and her child. Fortunately, the two could provide some financial assistance to get their daughter off her feet, however they saw the need for her to further her education in order to get a job good enough to provide for her daughter. 

There are a handful of success stories on hope for single moms website, the first listed is Leslie. She was introduced to the organization through a former high school teacher. She worried that her current job wouldn’t make her enough to sustain her soon to be child and self, but the organization could see her motivation to provide for her son. They helped her go into college classes to study medical coding and billing five months before she was due to get a head start. After her son was born, she took care of her school work and cared for her son on her days off of work. When her school weeks were done on Fridays, she would take care of her newborn and study at the same time in order to take her tests on the following Mondays. She managed to get all A’s in her classes and graduated in that same summer after taking her certification test. Her financial support team took her out for dinner as a celebration of this achievement showing that the program is more than just people managing her money. That September, Leslie landed her first job and took online classes to further her education while she worked and took care of her son. Doing homework on her lunch breaks, she finished her online classes and became the supervisor of the eye clinic billing department. Through this journey, Hope For Single Moms helped Leslie along the way to go from “poverty to prosperity”. 

How can students help? There are few ways students at GHS could help because most of what Hope For Single Moms do is financial. However, there is a need for volunteers and possibly help from parents. Anybody can volunteer and if students still need their service hours, they can get plenty of those hours by helping out.If there any students who are interested in volunteering or just want to find out more about this organization, all they need to do is click this link https://hsmgr.org/ and explore for themselves.