Only 2% Make It - We Can Help

Amayah is a teen mom
headed off to college this fall

She came to the US five years ago, when she was about 12. She made her way through a new country, culture, school system, and more. Now she's headed off to Southern Illinois University in the fall, full of promise and expectations.

The American Dream: believing in yourself; overcoming expectations and obstacles; succeeding through hard work. Amayah is all that, and more.

Amayah is also a teen mom. She's nothing like the flashy and combative young moms we see on reality TV. She’s the real deal - the young woman who had a child at 16, kept on going to school, is graduating and is heading to college without missing a beat. She's got her future in clear focus, and she's got her baby's future in mind as well - a balancing act that many parents decades older than Amayah have not mastered.

Right now, though -- this is when it gets hard. Amayah has challenges to face as she heads off to college that the other young students won't be burdened by. She'll need to find housing suitable to a small family, child care, and time to cook for, read to, play with, and care for her child. She'll have to plan her course schedule and her study groups around her child's timetable and then there will be other things that crop up - a babysitter bailing, her child getting a fever, or the stroller refusing to open.

Amayah is asking the Benevolent community for help with one singular challenge: for help paying her housing deposit and getting her apartment set up for herself and her child. I hope we'll meet this challenge and step up for Amayah. More importantly, I hope we'll be able to jump back in future years if another big challenge pops up. Maybe create a community of support just for Amayah. 

On average, about half of all teen moms finish high school. Another 15% will get their GED by the time they're 22. Only two percent - 2% - of teen moms complete college by the time they're 30. Those are ridiculously long odds. 

Let's step up, step in and become a part of Amayah's story, and let's hang out there for a while to keep an eye on her success and be there when she needs us.

Who's in?

- megan kashner, founder & CEO

More than the Monetary Value

“I really appreciate your help from the bottom of my heart. It is nice to know there are kind people still out there in the world.”	“The Benevolent Community has shown me overwhelming generosity. It has renewed my faith in humanity.”
“…it warms my heart to know that there are generous people out there…I say to others don't ever give up on your dreams and goals.”	“…more than the monetary value, I so greatly appreciate the thought behind the gift. Having a need is a burden, but your action has really lightened the load.”

When I conceived of the Benevolent concept a little over a year ago, I imagined that those who chose to contribute to meet the needs of the individuals on the site would be moved by their experience. I hoped that by allowing for a one-to-one connection between those with needs and those who could help, I would succeed in opening the eyes of donors to the realities of the circumstances faced by low-income adults every day as they strove toward their goals.

What I didn’t anticipate with the same clarity is how moved those who receive help through the Benevolent site would be by the support of those who contributed to their needs. Now I see it clearly. Our recipients are telling us that getting their need supported through Benevolent has been significant not only in a practical way, but also in a much deeper, much more personal way.

“The Benevolent Community has shown me overwhelming generosity. It has renewed my faith in humanity,” Bridgette tells us. She was helped by nine supporters who read her story of striving to complete her college education after having survived cancer.

When I read this and the responses of other recipients who were happily surprised to discover that there were people in the world who would choose to care about and help them – I saw clearly how those who have been trying as hard as they could for as many years as they can remember might easily lose sight of the humanity and kindness in their community and in others.

I know now that Benevolent is delivering more value than I had anticipated.

When we give to those with needs posted to Benevolent’s site, we’re gifting hope and inspiration, and delivering it with respect and humanity. This could seem trite to some, but imagine how impersonal the process of applying for and maintaining one’s unemployment eligibility, paying one’s tuition and rent, filling out papers for children’s school and for special services and supports and job programs can be.

In traditional applications for support or services, people are asked to fill out pages and pages of forms to prove that they’re worthy and not trying to bilk the system. On the Benevolent site, we’re asking questions like “What is particularly challenging about your situation? What is the toughest thing you face?” and “Why will meeting this need now move you towards your future goals?” and “Talk about what it will mean to you if you get your need met.”

These are questions that presume, up front, that the person who comes to Benevolent with a need is human, striving, and has feelings, reactions, and insight. The very uniqueness of this kind of respect and of the willingness of strangers to help out – the way it surprises and touches recipients -- demonstrates the deeply-ingrained impact of the ways we frame and treat need in our country and in our systems of support.

As we continue to meet people’s needs, we now know that we also get to restore their faith in humanity and let them know that there are generous, kind people in their community. Most importantly, we get to let people know that we see them, hear them, and hope they will succeed. That, in itself, is a gift.

- megan kashner, founder & ceo

Why These Needs?

Some of the needs on the Benevolent site don’t seem to conform to the over-a-hurdle type of need, like a tuxedo to enable someone to work as a banquet waiter or a sewing machine for a seamstress. Where do needs like beds, clothes, and school uniforms fit in?

Time after time, I’ve seen people forced to make decisions that impede their own progress towards greater sustainability because they need to meet basic needs of their households.

We know, for example, that Anne would have continued to purchase one cheap air mattress after another as they popped over and over, because that was all she could afford with her cash flow. Her goal, however, is to save up so that she and her son can get their own apartment. She was spending more on air mattresses over the course of a year than what it took to get her a bed through Benevolent. Staying with a friend while she gets back on her feet, now Anne is in a better position to reach for her goal and save the money to get her own place.

Facing basic need challenges while pursuing the next level of sustainability has the power to derail someone completely.

Monique is an interesting example of this potential. She is working and in college and asking for help with school uniforms and school supplies. The uniform is a good example of something that pops up in someone's life and can actually derail her. Monique bought her son a uniform for this school year in August, but by December he had outgrown it - something she didn't foresee or save up for.

I've seen mothers in this situation do one of several things…

• go to a payday loan store with catastrophic results
• borrow money from someone unscrupulous,
• get a second job and have to quit school,
• have sex or stay in a relationship for money,
• move into an unsafe or unhealthy place to save on rent.

These are things have happened in the lives of people I’ve worked with across a variety of settings. I’ve also seen (this was back in 1991) a mother who could afford only one school uniform for each of her children and so, like Anne buying air mattress after air mattress, this mom went to the laundromat every school night to wash her kids’ school uniforms.

Over time, of course, the things people do to meet basic needs or their skipping critical needs like vision-care can cost more than an up-front investment to meet the need would cost, but without taking one of the drastic steps above, how would the low-income adult get access to the liquid funds to pay the up-front cost?

That’s where we come in. That’s where we get to be a part of the story and to bring dignity and self-determination back into reach for those who invite us in.

Will our helping Monique with this unforeseen school uniform expense help keep her in college and on an upward path? We can’t know for sure. What we can know is that the person who knows her and validated her need has faith that Monique knows what she’s doing, what she needs help with, and how essential this help is to her ability to stay on her path. Our faith in Monique’s determination of her own most pressing needs might be the key to her continued success towards her goals.

- megan kashner, founder & ceo