ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, April 23, 1996 TAG: 9604230154
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: Beth Macy
SOURCE: BETH MACY
Darlene Bannister remembers the exact moment she knew something had to be done - and that it was her responsibility to do it.
She was a health department family-planning outreach worker attending an out-of-state workshop on teen pregnancy two years ago. All the speakers were white and middle class, with lots of initials after their names.
They may have been classified as ``experts,'' but Darlene knew their view of the issue wasn't grounded in personal experience or reality.
``I knew I wasn't the type of person they were talking about,'' the 35-year-old says. ``I knew we didn't all have to be poor and uneducated.''
She walked out of the workshop determined to start a program of her own - based not only on her work with teens, but also on her own life.
A mother herself at age 16, she knew firsthand the amount of climbing it took to get beyond the wall of hopelessness. ``Some mothers of teen moms are caught up in their own poverty, drugs and bad relationships, which leads the girls to look for somebody else to fill that void.
``The teen moms have no role models. No one is out there telling them, `You don't have to live this way.'''
Darlene Bannister is. She and nine others - all black women, all former teen mothers - have been telling their stories to area teen moms for the past year.
Called Sisters of Support, the group aims to give teen moms a glimpse of a brighter future; to show them that teen parenthood doesn't have to be the end-all that society makes it out to be.
They also listen to the girls' own struggles - sometimes prodding them along, sometimes offering shoulders to cry on, sometimes even taking them into their homes.
Deneen Evans, a counselor for the Roanoke Adolescent Health Partnership at Ruffner Middle and Fleming High schools, describes the relationship this way: ``A lot of these girls have a hard time showing emotional attachment. But with these women, they get up, hold hands, embrace and just really connect. It's a very spiritual thing.''
And it gets results. Evans recalls that one teen mom was so moved and motivated, she signed up for classes at Virginia Western Community College - later that same day.
``She had just graduated and she wasn't doing anything,'' Evans recalls. ``Her dream was always to go to college, but without the support of Darlene and the other women, she was just stuck.''
While Evans does her own share of motivating, ``There's a difference between me talking to them and Darlene. I can speak from textbooks and what I know, but not having lived it, I can't truly empathize. These women all have done well with their lives, and they're the best role models these girls can have.''
For Darlene, the details aren't always easy to relive. As a divorced mother with two children, she had to crawl her way out of welfare dependency - and all the chaotic trappings that surround it - one step at a time.
She took advantage of TAP programs that allowed her to earn an associate's degree from Virginia Western in child development. Her kids spent two years each enrolled in Head Start.
``I was always trying to go back to school, working two jobs at a time, to let my girls know that I loved them and that we could have a better life,'' she recalls. Even when they lived in public housing, ``We always had a nice apartment. I bought stuff from flea markets and fixed it up. They were always neatly dressed.''
Her oldest daughter, now 19, graduated from North Cross School last year, the only black in her class. She's now a freshman at Marymount University in Arlington. Remarried for the past two years, Darlene also has 16-year-old and 10-year-old daughters.
Sisters of Support meetings work because they're based on ``personal experience and bare reality,'' she says. ``No book stuff.''
The women preach financial independence and self-respect. They tell the girls: ``A man's not going to love you until you can love yourself.'' They remind them that, ``Even though teen pregnancy is popular, there's still the mentality that a man doesn't want to hook up with somebody with a lot of kids.''
They talk about the daily rigors of raising children; about the fact that there is ``no such thing as a spoiled child.'' They tell the girls how to prevent HIV and other diseases, and advise them how to get out of abusive relationships.
Darlene Bannister believes strongly in the need for welfare reform, but she also knows that young mothers entering the work force need transitional help. ``You need a couple of months to get yourself together. And I know for a fact that a lot of people don't work for that very reason - they're afraid they won't be able to get it together that fast.''
Darlene herself had a lot of family support. Her parents picked her children up from school and kept them while she worked and attended classes.
``I have gone from being a food-stamp recipient to a food-stamp worker; from a health-department patient to a health-department worker,'' she says.
``I want these girls to know, things can change.''
She recalls one rap session where a depressed teen mom confessed to being mired in a bad relationship and surrounded by violence. ``I looked at my friend and said, `That's our story,''' Darlene recalls.
``This girl is smart. She gets straight A's. And we keep telling her, those grades are her out. As long as she keeps taking care of her baby and working on herself, there is hope.''
Sisters of Support is open to former teen mothers, black and white. For information on joining, or to request a presentation, call Darlene Bannister at 857-7630, ext. 125.
LENGTH: Long : 107 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Roger Hart. Darlene Bannister, founder of Sisters ofby CNBSupport: "I have gone from being a food-stamp recipient to a
health-department patient to a food-stamp worker; from a
health-department patient to a health-department worker," she says.
"I want these girls to know, things can change." color.