When Nicole Lynn Lewis based Technology Hope in 2010, she realized that her group may very well be the primary place that parenting college students are ever advised “Sure.”
“The households we serve exit into the world, in academic and group settings, the place the reply is commonly, ‘No.’ They face a ton of crimson tape and are requested to carry out their poverty time and time once more to get their foot within the door to assets,” mentioned Lewis. “Once we design programming at Technology Hope, our direct and systemic change work, we wish to be a spot of ‘Sure.’ They don’t have to leap by hoops to get assets. The belief getting into is that they’re good and filled with potential.”
Nicole Lynn Lewis, founder and CEO of Technology Hope.
It’s why she and the board of administrators at Technology Hope have selected an bold five-year plan that can increase its work and influence over three million parenting college students by 2029.
Lewis mentioned that Technology Hope will domesticate leaders who can increase on the mission and dedicate themselves to the group’s Race Fairness Blueprint, which acknowledges systemic racial inequity. The nonprofit group plans to proceed increasing its personal workforce. By way of intentional partnerships, Lewis mentioned that Technology Hope plans to accumulate extra assets and share their message and information with establishments of upper training and policymakers throughout the nation.
Already lauded as a nationwide mannequin, Technology Hope creates change by two actions: direct interventions with parenting college students, and advocacy and systemic change efforts. Their direct interventions embrace their Scholar Program, which provides mentoring, tuition help, peer group, tutoring, and different wraparound helps to communities within the Washington, D.C., metro space and New Orleans, their newest regional enlargement. Efforts to alter coverage use information collected by these direct factors of contact as “proof within the pudding,” mentioned Lewis.
“Once we take away boundaries, we see younger mother and father and pupil mother and father do unimaginable issues,” mentioned Lewis. “We wish to be proof level for advocates and students: if you do take away boundaries, create intentional insurance policies, consider in [parenting students], notably in marginalized households, the sky is the restrict. We are able to say this coverage works, and right here’s why.”
In some ways, the brand new five-year strategic plan is a continuation of the work already going down behind the scenes. In 2021, Technology Hope had 15 staff. Now they’ve 48. They began direct service with seven teen moms within the D.C. metro space. Now, after increasing to the South, Technology Hope’s Scholar Program reached 175 in D.C. and 35 in New Orleans. They’ve begun planning their enlargement into a 3rd metropolis, but to be determined, however possible one other city location within the South. That new group will embrace 25 teen mother and father.
One of many methods Technology Hope has tried to affect the system just lately is by addressing gender biases in coverage that always focuses on feminine single mother and father as an alternative of fathers.
“Many instances, what you see in coverage, the default helps throughout many establishments are for moms,” mentioned Dr. Brittani Williams, director of advocacy, coverage, and analysis at Technology Hope, describing how parenting fathers are sometimes instantly seen and addressed as babysitters by others on campus.
Williams mentioned Technology Hope has used direct strategies to heart coverage concentrate on fathers, to not the exclusion of single moms, she specified, however in recognition that males in school, notably males of colour, are extra more likely to cease out earlier than attaining accreditation.
“Financial mobility is a core tenant in our mission and in our work, and at a time when the return on funding of school is coming into query, notably in males of colour — fathers — not persisting by to diploma, we discover we’re in an area to say, ‘Hey, these insurance policies in place earlier than haven’t executed justice, haven’t been simply assist for our pupil fathers as properly,’” mentioned Williams.
Dr. DeRionne Pollard, president of Nevada State College and Technology Hope Board Member.
“Don’t simply merely say, ‘I wish to serve this inhabitants,’” mentioned Pollard. “Ask how are you going to systematically perceive your information, put collectively a piece group to resolve issues, prototype pilot ideas in ways in which may be responsive, elevating college students’ voices within the area of your establishments, after which beginning to create coverage.”
Greater training establishments have to be aware of their college students and instigate factors of knowledge assortment alongside the best way to know who their college students actually are, together with parenting and caregiving college students, she mentioned.
“Technology Hope’s tagline is, ‘Households are the long run.’ They’re the way forward for greater training as properly,” mentioned Pollard. “That is about communities, concerning the economic system, and concerning the security and well being and wealth of our nation. We don’t have the luxurious of leaving anybody behind.”
Liann Herder may be reached at [email protected].
