Thrilled to announce the success of our Advisory Action Council launch! Our kickoff meeting was an incredible gathering hosted by our inspiring founder Neferteri Plessy and our co-founder Nicole Patterson. This power launch and partnership was sponsored the Kendra Scott Foundation.

During this community meeting, we delve into the pressing needs of working single mothers today and brainstormed ways to create a lasting impact when we unite. Want to join us in making a difference? Learn more and get involved at singlemomsplanet.org/council.

Single Moms Planet’s Advisory Action Council represents a new step forward in SMP’s mission to bring critical resources to single mother families across the country. Our new Advisory Action Council brings together a compassionate community of local and national leaders to advocate for educational advancement and economic stability for single mother households. By offering trailblazing small business initiatives, leadership programs, financial literacy education, business development opportunities, child support assistance, and critical fundraising events, the Advisory Action Council will help break the cycle of poverty for single mother households and put single moms in a position to lift up themselves.

 

 

 

On Saturday, September 30, Single Moms Planet held the first event led by members of our new Advisory Action Council – the Advisory Action Council Mixer! Advocate, Sip & Shop! at Kendra Scott at El Segundo.

We used the event as an opportunity for our new Advisory Action Council members to mingle and talk about our vision for the future of Single Moms Planet.

The event was just the first of many where the Advisory Action Council will meet to plan a better path forward for our organization and for struggling single mother families throughout the United States.

If you want to become a leader in your city and ambassador for the cause of uplifting single mother families, we would love to have you join us as a member of our Advisory Action Council.

One of our major objectives for 2023 and beyond is to expand Single Moms Planet to become a truly nationwide advocate for single mother families. If you think you can help SMP expand our resources into your city, then we need your help!

Apply now to become a local Advisory Action Council leader in your city, click here.

Single Moms Planet and under-resourced working single mother families in your city need you!

 

 

 

GREEN BAY, Wisc. – Green Bay Packers linebacker De’Vondre Campbell brought some Christmas spirit to local families by donating more than $50,000 in gifts to single parents ahead of the holiday last week.

The NFL Players Association named Campbell their Community MVP for Week 16 thanks to the donation and his efforts to brighten the lives of residents in Green Bay and Minnesota, where he played college football.  

The All-Pro linebacker made the donation behalf of his namesake De’Vondre Campbell Family Youth Foundation, as part of its Adopt-A-Family program. Each year, the organization provides assistance to families during the holidays, but this year, Campbell sought out single-parent households with this newest initiative.

“It’s not just for the kids, it’s for the parents and their guardians,” Campbell explained in the NFLPA’s announcement of his Week 16 award. “If we can help in this small way to relieve stress, help with a hardship and change a life, we are blessed to do it.”

Campbell with other volunteers surprised 25 single parents, foster care families and others facing hardship by visiting them and providing unique presents that included a new car, a washer/dryer system and more.

As the most recent winner of the Community MVP Award, Campbell will receive a $10,000 donation to his charity or a foundation to assist the local community, courtesy of the NFLPA. Moreover, he will also be eligible to win the Alan Page Community Award at the end of the season, which is the highest honor the players association can bestow on one of its members.

Campbell has been active with local communities including Green Bay, Minnesota, and his hometown of Ft. Myers, Florida. His annual football camp in Ft. Myers is a mainstay in the Florida community going back to his early days of playing football.

BOYNTON BEACH, Fla.  — Janie Yoshida was driving her daughter home from high school play rehearsal one cool autumn evening when she noticed a teenager walking by himself next to a busy road, according to a story from CNN.

Tre Burrows, it turned out, was also in the same play at Somerset Academy Canyons High School in Boynton Beach. Despite his initial reticence, the 17 year old agreed to get a ride home.

Janie soon learned the boy, his single mom and siblings were living in a motel and struggling with their daily needs.

From that point on, Janie gave Tre a ride every day after play rehearsal. Sometimes, she would make up an excuse to get fast food along the way, just to make sure Tre had a hot meal.

“I don’t want to cook tonight,” she’d tell him. “Let’s just go through the drive thru.”

Then one day, Tre let slip another detail about his family life.

“‘I’m gonna save this (meal),’” he told Janie, “’and split it with my sisters’” – one older and two younger, all together at the motel.

Tre’s mother, it turned out, had been working two jobs and hanging by a thread to support her four children against immeasurable odds.

Despite the financial challenges, Cindy Dawkins worked tirelessly to give her kids everything they needed. She had every meal ready, even without a kitchen. She helped with homework. Instead of asking her older ones to work part-time to support the family, she encouraged extracurricular activities such as track or school theater.

Tre eventually told Janie why he’d been nervous about telling anyone where he lived. He was afraid the Department of Children and Families would find out and take the kids away to foster homes.

Janie asked to meet the children’s mom – she was floored by her work ethic and strength.

Cindy moved from the Bahamas to the U.S. for what seemed like a promising career in the hospitality industry. But an avalanche of “bad luck on top of bad luck” fell on her, Janie said, including a layoff and a divorce.

She ended up having to waitress at two restaurants – one during the day, the other at night.

“And she did all of that with a smile on her face because she didn’t want us to know exactly how hard it was to do all that,” said Tre, now 21.

Despite working two jobs, Cindy couldn’t get an apartment on her own because of a prior eviction. So she and her children moved into the motel, which cost far more per month than an apartment.

For three years, Cindy raised her four children in a motel room while working multiple jobs. Behind the omnipresent smile she put on for her kids, though, Cindy was struggling. “She was like, ‘I don’t have a moment to myself or any privacy except when I’m in the shower. So if I’m going to break down, I’m going to cry, it’s going to be in the shower,’” Janie recalled.

“‘And I’ve got to put my face back on, walk out of the bathroom in front of the kids and make sure that they don’t see it from me because I have to make them think everything’s OK.’”

But the family’s bad luck continued that day Tre missed play rehearsal. The next day, Janie asked if he had been sick. She learned the family had been kicked out of the hotel because they couldn’t pay. But Janie told her husband they had to get the family an apartment.

Soon, with Janie’s name on the lease, the family of five moved into a two-bedroom apartment – mom in one bedroom, her four children sharing the other.

Cindy paid the rent and utilities “earlier or on time – always,” Janie said.

She got a raise at one of her restaurant jobs, Tre said, allowing her to quit her second job and spend more time with her kids. But that cherished time with her children would be short-lived.

With a new home and better pay, Cindy and her kids eagerly anticipated celebrating her 50th birthday last year.

“We were planning on going up to Orlando a few days before and then spend her birthday up there,” Tre said.

But soon after moving in last year, Cindy got sick. She spent her birthday, Aug. 1, in bed with severe Covid-19. The disease ravaged her body so quickly, “I didn’t even get to see her after she went into the hospital,” Tre said.

But just six days after her birthday, on Aug. 7, 2021 – Cindy died.

“She didn’t have any prior illnesses. … We just didn’t think anything like that would happen because we were healthy,” Tre said.

“We were seeing the news (about) all the people passing away from Covid, but you never really understand exactly how bad it is until you experience it firsthand. We weren’t thinking this would completely uproot our lives.”

Tre said his mother did not get vaccinated, in part due to rumors about side effects.

“We didn’t want to do this and then (have it) potentially cause us to get sick,” Tre said. “We know better than that now. But I guess that was the reasoning behind her not getting” vaccinated.

Tre and his siblings joined a growing group of children – orphans of Covid. More than 212,000 U.S. children have lost one or both parents to Covid-19, according to estimates from Imperial College London. And the numbers keeps rising.

Tre was the first to hear from the doctor his mother had passed. He rushed to the hospital and told his older sister, Jenny Burrows, now 25, to get there immediately.

When Jenny arrived, “We cried for hours,” Tre recalled.

They woke up heir siblings Zoe Clarke, then 15, and Sierra Clarke, then 12, and the most horrific nightmare had just turned into reality.

Feeling despondent, overwhelmed and having to plan a funeral, Tre told Janie the news.

“I just lost it. I couldn’t believe it,” Janie said. “It was devastating.”

She realized the siblings quickly needed help – and not just financially. The kids needed to know how to parent on the fly. Without a living legal guardian, the children’s greatest fear was getting separated. So, Janie helped Jenny get to work on becoming the younger girls’ legal guardian. It was just one of the many legal complications that followed their mother’s death.

“Another thing that’s helping us tremendously is we were able to get the girls set up with Social Security benefits from my mom,” Tre said, which will help support Sierra and Zoe until they turn 18.

Janie and her husband also paid the remaining six months on the apartment’s lease. And she started a GoFundMe account, with an initial goal of helping pay for Cindy’s funeral expenses.

Then just as Janie had stepped in as a stranger to help so did hundreds or strangers touched by the family’s story.

The crowdfunding effort grew so popular, it raised enough for a down payment on a house so the children wouldn’t have to worry about getting evicted. Any extra funds likely will go toward Sierra’s and Zoe’s college education in the coming years.

To read the full story, click here.

Pictured: From left, Tre Burrows, Cindy Dawkins and Jenny Burrows.

LOS ANGELES – The things that parents say to their children can either encourage and give them confidence, or lower their self-esteem and hold them back in life, according to a story reported by CNBC.

Author Margot Machol Bisnow, who wrote the article said that while she was researching her new book “Raising an Entrepreneur,” she spoke to 70 parents who raised highly successful adults about how they helped their kids achieve their dreams.

To her surprise, although it was an extremely diverse group — of races, religions, socioeconomic brackets and education — all the parents interviewed by Bisnow said they gave their kids the same messages every day – some were tough love, while others offered positive wisdom.

1. “I can’t do everything for you.”

These parents were the opposite of overprotective parents Instead, they set clear expectations and trusted their kids to take responsibility.

More importantly, they allowed natural consequences to take place. If their child didn’t study and failed a quiz, for instance, they used that as an opportunity for reflection and learning.

When Robert Stephens, a former executive at Best Buy, was three years old, he decided to take off all the doorknobs in the house. “My parents weren’t angry, they just told me I had to put them all back,” he said.

Stephens became the “fix-it” guy in his family. Then, at 24, he went on to start Geek Squad, a repair company that he later sold for $3 million.

2. “Do your best and be kind.”

All the entrepreneurs learned the importance of kindness since they were young.

Blake Mycoskie founded TOMS in 2006, which has since given away more than 95 million pairs of shoes. His company introduced the “one-for-one” business model, in which one needed item is given away for each item purchased.

His mother said that instilling compassion was an important part of bringing up her children: “We always adopted three or four families at Christmas through our church and bought clothes and toys that we delivered together to the kids.”

This was always their “family policy — to help those less fortunate,” she said. “The kids have seen this practiced their entire lives.”

3. “If something doesn’t work out, don’t be sad. It may turn out to be a good thing later on.”

The future entrepreneurs learned to win and lose gracefully, and to not obsess over mistakes. Pivoting and trying a new approach was also key.

Jonathan Neman tried to start a number of businesses in college, but none of them took off. He learned about what did work, and what didn’t. After college, he and his friends co-founded Sweetgreen, which now has over 900 locations around the country.

“Even if my dad didn’t think something was a good idea, he supported me,” Neman said. “My entrepreneurship journey is all about resilience. We keep going. We fail, we try and try again, we fail, we try and try and try.”

To read the full story, click here.