\n<\/p>\n
T<\/span>hree months after giving birth to her son, Amaya Jones moved into a new apartment complex. She knew no one else in the building, but it was a fresh start for her and her two children. One day, someone put up a flyer on her unit\u2019s door, notifying her about a program called the Magnolia Mother\u2019s Trust (MMT).<\/p>\n Launched in 2018, the MMT is the longest-running guaranteed income program in the country, and the first to target extremely low-income families headed by Black mothers in Jackson, Mississippi. With no strings attached, the program provides mothers with $1,000 a month for 12 months.<\/p>\n While she was pregnant, Jones experienced homelessness. She applied for the program, knowing that it could be life-changing. When she found out that she had been selected for that year\u2019s cohort, Jones \u201cburst out into tears\u201d, she said. \u201cI went from full-time to part-time to barely making ends meet. I was like: \u2018Oh, my God. Lord, you hear my cry.\u2019 It was rainbows after bad weather.\u201d<\/p>\n When Jones\u2019s son was younger, he was frequently sick, and the family was living paycheck to paycheck. Missing a day of work, even to care for an infant, meant that her check would be short, and Jones struggled to ensure she was covering the day-to- day expenses for her children.<\/p>\n <\/span>Allonnah Hawkins, seven; Alonzo Hawkins, nine; and their mother, Cheryl Gray, in their apartment in Jackson on 6 August 2019. Gray received support from Springboard to Opportunities and was working on buying a house through Habitat for Humanity.<\/span> Photograph: The Washington Post\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Now, she\u2019s able to exceed it.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a sigh of relief,\u201d Jones says of the guaranteed income. \u201cI was actually able to take my kids out of town, stuff I wouldn\u2019t be able to do. It\u2019s more time with my children. It\u2019s still helping me today because I\u2019m not struggling and I can prepare myself for the future. My kids are still taken care of.\u201d<\/p>\n Being in a cohort with other single moms who receive assistance from MMT has also helped her build community. The MMT is \u201cbigger than the money\u201d, Jones said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had meetings. We talked about mental health,\u201d she said. \u201cI found new people who lived in the apartments, because I knew no one. It\u2019s like a very big sisterhood and familyhood to this day.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen my baby was in the hospital, they would check on my baby: \u2018Do you need anything?\u2019 Even if I didn\u2019t reply, they would text me again. Some people don\u2019t like to talk about their problems. Some people don\u2019t like to talk about things that they may be going through \u2026 But when they say this is an open space, everything stays in this room. We\u2019ve talked about so many things. If you need a little free time, bring the kids to me. We build relationships and friendships. That\u2019s what the trust is.\u201d<\/p>\n The MMT is an initiative from Springboard to Opportunities, a non-profit organization that Aisha Nyandoro, from Mississippi, co-founded in 2013. Springboard works directly with families who live in federally supported affordable housing in Jackson. Nyandoro calls it a \u201cradically resident-driven approach\u201d.<\/p>\n But by 2017, Nyandoro became concerned that Springboard wasn\u2019t moving the needle enough on poverty. Though the organization has after-school programs, workforce development, reading circles and other programing, she started wondering what else they needed to offer.<\/p>\n A chance conversation with a mother put her on a new path.<\/p>\n <\/span>Aisha Nyandoro, CEO of Springboard to Opportunities, in Jackson on 15 May 2023.<\/span> Photograph: Rogelio V Solis\/AP<\/p>\n \u201cI was like: \u2018Oh, what are you doing this weekend? Are you doing a movie with the kids?\u2019 In conversation, that\u2019s just standard theater,\u201d Nyandoro said. \u201cAnd this mom looked at me, and she was like: \u2018Let me tell you \u2013 I can\u2019t afford something like a pizza.\u2019 And in that moment, it clicked. I was unsettled all weekend. I came back to my team, and I was like: \u2018We\u2019re missing something. This is a mom that we are intimately involved with. We have relationships with her. Her kids are involved in our programs and she\u2019s involved with our programming, and she is telling us that she can\u2019t afford something as inconsequential as a pizza.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Springboard prioritized community feedback, and asked the residents they work with what they were missing.<\/p>\n \u201cThat question just opened up all these stories. When we sat down and listened, I said: \u2018Oh my God, all of this can be stopped with money,\u2019\u201d Nyandoro said. \u201cThat\u2019s really where we started thinking about what it would look like if we just gave families that we work with the financial support that they need to actualize the goals that they have for themselves and their families.\u201d<\/p>\n A year later, in December 2018, Springboard launched the first cohort of the Magnolia Mother\u2019s Trust program, with 20 moms participating.<\/p>\n \u201cThe response to that first year, when moms realized that they had been selected, was pure joy,\u201d Nyandoro said. \u201cIt was a novelty \u2013 someone is just going to give you a thousand dollars a month for 12 months and open 529 accounts for your kids? So many of our moms thought that it was a scam.\u201d<\/p>\n The MMT is unapologetic about being specifically for Black mothers.<\/p>\n \u201cThe unfortunate reality is that the data is the data,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s not as if we are saying that we are working with Black women because we are trying to exclude anyone else. We are saying that we are honoring the tenets of what guaranteed income is. Guaranteed income is a specific amount of money given to a specific population for a set amount of time. And that funding is typically given to the financially most harmed within a community.<\/p>\n \u201cHere in Jackson, Mississippi, the financially most harmed are Black women, specifically Black mothers, and that is because of the policies and the systems that we have put in place that make it virtually impossible for them to earn at the same level as their counterparts.\u201d<\/p>\n This year\u2019s cohort, launched in May, faces unique challenges. The program sustained itself in 2020, through the first year of the Covid pandemic, and in 2023, when the supreme court\u2019s decision reversing affirmation action sent destructive waves of anti-diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) governmental, educational and social policies through the country. Those issues have since compounded and families are also facing an affordability crisis and an increasingly unstable economy.<\/p>\n \u201cThis year, the moms are probably a little more stressed than in previous years, because of the affordability crisis and because of the impact on the social safety net,\u201d Nyandoro said. \u201cThey\u2019re very aware of what\u2019s happening with the \u2018big, beautiful bill\u2019. So you see some clear exhalation like: \u2018I\u2019m going to be OK. I got this. This is right on time.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n When Kenja Patton was selected for this year\u2019s cohort, she thought: \u201cGod answers prayers.\u201d With the program\u2019s help, she was able to surprise her son with a trip to Disney World for his kindergarten graduation.<\/p>\n Her son, who is now six, is asthmatic, and Patton had to leave one of her jobs during one of his extended hospital stays.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s given me more freedom,\u201d she said of the trust. \u201cIf something happens with him or if I need to go to the school, it makes a big difference.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Three months after giving birth to her son, Amaya Jones moved into a new apartment complex. She knew no one else in the building, but it was a fresh start for her and her two children. One day, someone put up a flyer on her unit\u2019s door, notifying her about a program called the Magnolia<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":51046,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[706,5084,15072,3642,536,778,5332,24965,1569],"class_list":{"0":"post-51045","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-black","9":"tag-mississippi","10":"tag-moms","11":"tag-month","12":"tag-program","13":"tag-results","14":"tag-single","15":"tag-undeniable","16":"tag-year"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51045"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51045\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/51046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\u2018Pure joy\u2019<\/h2>\n
\u2018It\u2019s given me more freedom\u2019<\/h2>\n