High School Completion Program
High School Completion Program
Encouraging at-risk, pregnant and parenting high school girls to remain and complete high school is one of AWE’s very important success-enhancing tool. A high school diploma opens doors for further education and/or employment. Adding food and baby supplies also fit right into our plan as it is very difficult to concentrate, learn and be successful when a girl or her baby is hungry, wet and crying. Therefore, AWE provides not just laptops for learning but also food, baby diapers, and other supplies and tools facilitate learning and success.
The Shirley Schneider Support Center (SSSC) Program
Our aim in this project is three-fold:
1
Provide a good start in life for the developing fetus:
All the important organs, including the brain of fetuses are developed during pregnancy. The girls therefore need nourishing food to provide necessary nutrients for the proper development of the fetus. This helps preclude nutrition-related maladies that can hinder proper organs development. After birth, nourishing food needs continue, to enable Moms produce adequate milk for their babies. Most of the girls at SSSC are from poor families that do not have adequate nourishing food at home. Pregnancy and breast-feeding increases food requirements both in quality and quantity. It is therefore critical that the girls have access to needed quantity and quality of food.
2
Help the girls maintain good mental health
High school is a difficult time for many teens. When it is then coupled with pregnancy and parenting, the stress on these youths increases exponentially. This can result in depression, substance abuse which would be very detrimental to both Mom and baby. Many tend to drop out, which increases their isolation, diminishes their self-esteem and would negatively impact their future economic situation. Those without a high school diploma are less likely to find a well-paying job or engage in higher education. The result is the continuation of a poverty cycle which further negatively impacts self-esteem and mental health.
Providing them with food and other childcare supplies, being in a center where all the girls are in the same boat, and where professionals help them deal with pregnancy issues and good parenting skills facilitate good mental health for the girls. One of the girls said this to me:
“Until I came here, I didn’t care much for school. But here where people like you help us, provide food, computers and other things for us, it just makes me want to succeed. I never had good grades until now, thank you for making me want to succeed”
Here is what another girl said: “Before I came here, sometimes when I ran out of money, instead of concentrating on my work during class, I will be worrying about how I was going to get food and what I will do after the baby is born. It was very bad when I was throwing up in the morning, because even when I had a little food, I will throw it all up. I will be feeling so tired and had no desire to keep attending school. Then I came here (SSSC). Having all this food takes away that worry and allows me to concentrate. It has made a very big difference for me. Thank you”.,
3
Help prepare these youths for the future.
High school diploma is very important for enabling employment, higher learning and skills training. This is why it is so very important to ensure these girls remain and complete high school. Food availability at school, is also an incentive for the girls to attend school because they know they can access food there.
Planting seeds of ambition in the girls’ minds is also very important. Many of them stated that they will be the first to have a high school diploma in their family if they complete high school and graduate. We do not want their highest goal to be a high school diploma. We want them to dream big. Therefore, whenever possible, they are engaged in conversations which encourage them to dream of how they would like the rest of their lives to unfold after high school. We try to open their minds to possibilities depending on their interests. We get them to think about the kind of life they would like for their babies and what could facilitate that. These kinds of conversations were sometimes met with the view that they could never attain such dreams, therefore there was no point to dream. However, we often advise them of available resources that are not aware of that can help them. There is great potential in the power of a dream, therefore we try hard to get the girls to dream.