Meet Etel, a two-time Raise The Barr cohort member and single-parent student based in California.

Congratulations to Kiara for securing an apartment for her and her three-year-old child, while also completing her first semester at Cal State Long Beach! 

This is Katie, a Minnesota-based mother of four and 2023 UNW graduate. Congratulations to Katie for earning her B.S. in business management this spring!

Nikki is one of our newest board members and alumni scholars. Nikki almost missed out on receiving any accolades when graduating despite her stellar 3.93 GPA. Augsburg University had systematic barriers put in place that prevented Nikki from being eligible to graduate with honors because she was a transfer student. After making the University aware of its barrier, Nikki was awarded the Richard J. Tony award from Augsburg University.

When her two amazing sons were first born, Chineva Smith received hurtful and damaging comments about being a single parent. Over the years, she has challenged such negative assumptions by raising Juélz and Caden with unwavering wisdom, grit, and compassion. Whether we have experienced life as a single-parent student or not, we all have something to learn and admire from hearing Chineva’s story.

Jessica Armstrong is a thriver. That’s my word for someone who exceeds expectations. On top of proving every negative statistic wrong (you know the ones) she has excelled in life. Jessica was a 2017 RTB scholar, receiving support during her final year in school.

An email came through on Saturday from a mom living in the “eye of the storm” in St. Paul, Minnesota. The fear expressed in her words was palpable, the sadness overwhelming.

Brenda is set to graduate from UCLA in just a couple of weeks with a degree in Sociology. She was recently accepted into graduate school at both UCLA and USC!

Maria Canar is strong, beautiful, and funny. She is the mother of two amazing little girls, an immigrant from Ecuador, a first-generation college student, and now a 2020 graduate of University of Minnesota!

To all you single parents out there who are graduating this month or next, congratulations on doing the unexpected!

Raising kids alone is hard. It requires strength and stamina, fearless determination and grit, creativity and vision, but mostly unselfish love

I love maps. Not the Google or Waze kind, but real paper maps. The kind that open up and show you the wide-open spaces that can be navigated, with keys, distances, and landmarks.

For some of us, the pandemic is our first encounter with a traumatic experience. But for others, it’s a visit with an unwelcome relative.

I received an email late last week from a single mom who is at home with her six kids. It began with, “This is really hard!”