Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, July 17, 1990 TAG: 9007170388
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A/1 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: MIKE HUDSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
"I just thought I'd be like that forever," she remembers. "I was just being a typical teen-ager. I was bored with school and had better things to do."
College seemed even more unlikely after she had a baby at age 19.
Now the single mother is 21, working on her second semester at Virginia Western Community College, and she looks at things differently. School still bores her, but she's willing to work at it.
"I want to make A's and B's," she says. "I'm not satisfied with anything less."
Mundy gives part of the credit for her new outlook to Project Image, a Roanoke Valley program aimed at helping young single mothers get an education, get off welfare and find good jobs.
It is a joint project of the Fifth District Employment and Training Consortium, the Roanoke Department of Social Services and Total Action Against Poverty.
Project Image has been funded for the last 13 months with a $177,000 grant that was part of a state initiative aimed at reducing dependency on welfare. A total of $750,000 went to five local programs across the state.
However, the General Assembly did not come up with money for the initiative this budget year. Project Image's funding from the grant ran out at the end of last month.
Carolyn Barrett, administrator of the employment consortium, said the three agencies will use other in-house funds to continue the project. But they also are looking for more money from other sources.
To enroll in Project Image, single mothers must be high-school dropouts ages 16-20 who receive federal Aid to Dependent Children. Officials are considering raising the maximum age to 24.
The project provides the mothers one-on-one counseling, classes to help them study for their high-school equivalency diplomas, weekend retreats for group discussions, and day care for their children while they are working or in class.
Even so, just two of the mothers in the program have found jobs that are well-paying enough to get them off welfare. Because of the many problems the mothers face, it may take three years or more of intensive support for a significant number of them to become independent, Barrett said.
Barrett said some mothers drop in and out of the program, missing meetings and other appointments. Their chances for success are obviously not good.
Of the 43 mothers who have entered the program, 10 have dropped out of the program completely.
Of the 33 who are left:
Sixteen are still studying for their high-school equivalency diplomas.
Twelve have earned their high-school or high-school equivalency diplomas. Four of those have gone on to college.
At least three have full-time jobs.
If more than half of all the mothers can follow through and make it through the full program, Barrett said, that "would be more than we would ever have imagined."
The most optimistic goal of Project Image is to help the mothers buy their own homes. So far, none has come close to that.
For the most part, Barrett said, the young women in the program are bright. What they simply need is "that small touch of success" to get them going.
"Sometimes this group has no advocate out there," Barrett said. "People say: `They got pregnant. Tough. It's not our problem.' "
Chris Robertson, planning supervisor with the training consortium, said the key is getting the mothers to think about the long term - "What will I actually get from this one year or five years from now?" - instead of focusing only on what's going to happen tomorrow or next week.
Angela Mundy was already starting to look ahead last summer before she got involved with Project Image. She was studying for a high-school equivalency diploma at Total Action Against Poverty when she was asked to enroll in Project Image.
But she said it was Project Image that provided the spark that helped her really start moving forward.
She went on a weekend retreat at Smith Mountain Lake with other mothers in the program. It gave her a chance to hear from others who had similar experiences, she said. She heard them talk about how much they, like her, wanted to get off welfare.
"It kind of took effect afterward - after a few weeks," Mundy said. "I just felt suddenly motivated and ready to change my life. I guess it was realizing that all those other girls wanted the same things I wanted, it made me open my eyes and see I wasn't getting anywhere."
Armed with her high-school equivalency diploma, she started at Virginia Western in January.
"It was hard, my first semester," she said. "It's hard now still. I set small goals as well as big ones. One small goal is just making it to the end of the semester."
Project Image pays for day care for her 2-year-old son, Travis, while she's in school.
"They just take care of you pretty good. And if you need to talk to anybody, they're always there. They treat you like equals."
She wants to get her associate degree and then get a job and study part-time toward a bachelor's degree. After seeing the counselors in the program, she's decided she wants to become a counselor herself.
Project Image has been important to her, she said, but "I wouldn't have done this if I didn't want to. They just helped me find out that I did."
by CNB