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UMass Boston and Kennedy Library to Co-Sponsor Presidential Debate on October 3, 2000 |
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Commonwealth Journal: A Public Affairs Show for Massachusetts |
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College of Nursing Graduates Receive Pins at December 21 Ceremony |
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Women in Community Development: Changing the Tradition from Poverty to Leadership |
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Ethel Nixon sees herself as a leader and a teacher, but this is a relatively newfound identity. Just a few years ago, she was on welfare, and had abandoned nearly all hope of pursuing her college degree.
In
1998, however, she discovered a program designed to provide low-income
women with the needed academic, financial, and peer support for college
success. The program, Women in Community Development (WICD), is a collaboration
among Project Hope, the Women's Institute for Housing and Economic Development,
and the College of Public and Community Service at UMass Boston. Now Ethel
Nixon is a CPCS student and a WICD peer leader.
WICD participants&emdash;called "Mellon Scholars" in recognition of the program's lead funder, Mellon Bank, participants earn bachelor's degrees in such areas as human services, community planning, advocacy, and criminal justice, thus enriching those fields with women who have utilized services or who live in disinvested communities, and increasing the women's economic stability and independence. One quarter of participants are former welfare recipients. Many are single parents living in the Roxbury and Dorchester area. WICD funders include Mellon Bank, the Mabel Chase Fund, the Little Sisters of the Assumption, Polariod Corporation, Boston Women's Fund, the Lenny Fund, and the Nellie Mae Foundation
According to data from the 1998 Current Population Survey, workers with bachelor's degrees had average gross earnings of $40,478 compared to $22,895 for those with high school diplomas.
As Professor Marie Kennedy, program director for Community Planning and Human Services explains, "Getting an education is a way to get out of poverty and to stay out of poverty. It has been proven time after time. The focus of the WICD program," She continues, "is not only individual development, but community development as well."
Designed also to promote leadership development, the program encompasses peer leadership and support: participants help one another. In her second year of graduate school at UMass Boston, program graduate Deborah Gray serves as WICD co-faciliator and mentor. Currently employed by Family Nurturing Center, Gray successfully secured a major grant to conduct parent workshops there.
In Ethel Nixon's life, this individual and community development is well begun. Working her way towards a bachelor's degree in human services, Nixon says that family and friends have noticed a change in her and that the change has, in turn, motivated them to think seriously of college.
The effect on her children has been most striking. "By going to college," she explains, "I have shown my children something. You do what you see your mother do. It's called tradition. I had been on welfare, but I changed the tradition. I'm a leader, a teacher now. It's a role that wasn't open to me before. My twelve-year old," she adds, "has been on the honor roll every year since I began; my older daughter is in college; and my pastor even wants me to speak at church. It's really been leadership development. "
Nixon and Gray are not the only proof that the program works. Since 1997, twenty-five Mellon Scholars, their ages ranging from 19 to 50, have begun college and two have graduated with honors and are pursuing graduate degrees. Seventeen are continuing their education. Six have left to pursue employment or other training programs. Ten are currently employed in their chosen fields.
WICD participants share struggles in attaining their education despite economic challenges, and the difficulties of juggling work, family and school. Peer support is developed through informal interactions facilitated by two partipants at bi-weekly meetings at Project Hope. Gray explains, "Support has been financial as well as networking and helping each other stay in school. "
Raising five children with her fiance, Mellon Scholar Emma Kigoni, confirms the value of peer support: " As a single parent, you're rolling pennies, dealing with financial crises or sick kids, handling work and going to school.... If you're on your own, it's easy to say 'I'm tired, I want to quit.' Here, there is support, someone to call you and offer you the encouragement you need to keep going."