[00:00:01] Speaker A: Welcome to Life Reviewed, a podcast by Hope House Colorado, where we invite you into conversation with teenage moms and the people who champion them. These stories of struggle, overcoming and perspective shifts will challenge you to review life as you've known it. One story, one person, one conversation at a time.
[00:00:20] Intro Music: Oh, I thought I knew the kind of life that I would lead...
[00:00:28] Speaker A: Hello. Welcome to episode two of our brand new podcast, Life Reviewed. I'm super excited to be here today with Unique, one of my very favorite teen mommas. You are going to love her just as much as I do. We're gonna get to chat with her in just a few minutes. But today you get to hear sort of part two of the history of Hope House. When we left off in episode one, we had talked a little bit about how God built Hope House and how we call our residential program the house that God built. And we talked a little bit about how we had finished building our house and had moved into this kind of temporary resource center. And today we get to hear a little bit about what God has done from that point forward and moving into a brand new 15,000 square foot resource center, which was absolutely incredible and also sort of completely terrifying. So when we left off, we had talked a little bit about how we had started this capital campaign and the fact that I had never done a capital campaign in my life and what even is a capital campaign. We had actually worked with a consultant for a little bit of time and learned how to go about doing a capital campaign. But it's still really scary to sit down with people and ask them for these huge sums of money.
It's so humbling to sit down with one of our champions and look them in the eye and just say, hey, this is what we're doing. And ask them for six figure sums of money over a three year period of time and for them to say yes and like to get to go back to the our little tiny resource center that we had at the time and share with the moms. Like, wow, we just went and had lunch with one of our champions and they said yes to a $200,000 gift. And first of all, just the fact that somebody would be that incredibly generous, but more so, it was the fact that they would be that generous for our moms and to get to share with our teen moms. Like, here are these people who maybe haven't even met you and they love you and believe in you so much that they're giving, like, huge sums of money to build this brand new building because they believe, just like we do that you need a place to belong. And that our teen moms, unfortunately, so often have felt sort of lost and just isolated and not having a place that's their place, where they feel safe and warm and loved, where everybody around them, like, sees them and loves on them. And I think we talked a little bit in episode one about how so often our teen moms have come from life situations where they've just struggled with family members who struggle, sometimes through no fault of their own. But our teen moms just get sort of inundated with these problems that their family members have or even their own parents have, whether it's drug addiction or domestic violence or alcoholism, that really impact their life and create these home environments that just don't feel safe to them. Oftentimes. That is exactly what led to being a teenage mom in the first place. And unique's over here just kind of nodding at me.
And so we talked a little bit about how incredible it was that these champions would come forward to give in that way to build this building. And as much as we had raised, we were, I think at the point that we left off in our story last episode, we were probably around the $4 million mark, and yet we still had to raise another million dollars to finish this building. It was a $5 million prize for a 15,000 square foot space that would be. I mean, it just felt like here we were coming from this tiny little 2000 square foot space where we were crammed into, like, every corner of that building into this enormous space where we were going to have classrooms, like actual classrooms upstairs and downstairs. So we could be doing more than one class at a time. Moms could be upstairs learning about how to care for their own self, like self care classes or parenting classes in one classroom and downstairs in the learning lab learning about working on their GED or their high school diploma. And we were going to have this amazing, big, huge dining room. And it was, in our minds, we just had this huge dream of what it was going to look like. And yet it was such a struggle to get there. Like, I remember just thinking we were going to be in that tiny little resource center for one year. That was the idea. We were going to be there one year. And we had this incredible donor that was allowing us to use the space for free. And every year for six years, I would call him up and ask him, can we have one more year for free? Because this is taking way longer than any, anybody expected it to. Six whole years of raising the money. Although I will say the huge blessing out of it taking that long is that we had raised all of the money for the building by the time we got to the end of the project. And so that we had no debt, we had no loan that we had to be paying on. But that last million dollars, there was literally no way we were going to get there. And so we were. Our board of directors was just, like, going back and forth. Do we even put in the lower level? Do we do a basement or not? Do we just do one floor? Because that would save some money. And we must have gone back and forth, like, at least twelve times in a row at monthly meetings. It was like a whole year. We kept going back and forth. What should we do? Finally, we had this, like, amazing board member. His name's Steve Prokopiak, who, sadly, we lost. He passed away in May of this year, this past year. But he was just amazing. And he had these relationships with all these different, like, construction folks. And he had been in the construction industry. He was a civil engineer, and he had been part of this organization called homemade. And homemade, I'm always going to say this wrong, but they're sort of like the philanthropic arm of the home Builders association. And typically they would work with a nonprofit that was doing housing, and they would help with putting a new room on a house or even building a whole entire house. But they had never built a commercial building before. So Steve was like, what if we could get. They called him a builder captain, but what if we could get homemade, defined as a builder captain to build a commercial building? And I'm like, okay, let's see what happens. Because the thing is, if homemade came on board, they could usually get about a third of your project donated through, in kind donations of, like, material or the labor that was needed. So that would cover our last million dollars that we needed if they would come on board. So Steve approached them. They were really interested in it. We ended up getting a meeting with a guy named Rusty Crandall at Meritage Homes, which was totally a full circle moment because I had never met Rusty Crandall, but his wife, Sherry, was a longtime friend. She had been, her group at her church had adopted our teen mops group way back before we even started Hope house. And she had been the first volunteer to volunteer in our residential home. And I kind of wondered whether her husband actually existed because she talked about him, but I had never seen him in all those years. And so here I, you know, Steve picks up the phone and gets a meeting with Rusty. Like, just calls him, and it's like, all right, we're gonna go meet with Rusty. I'm like, oh, my gosh. How did you do that? So here we are in Rusty's office, and we're chatting with him about this, and he's, like, getting all excited and he and his wife are believers. And I think he felt like this was an opportunity to do something for God, like that his company could get on board and do something for God that was outside the box of what they typically do. But he's a residential builder, and I had no idea. The residential building world is, like, totally and completely separate from the commercial building world. Like, they don't use the same subs, they don't use the same vendors, they don't ever cross paths. They just do everything completely differently. And, I mean, I had no idea. So he couldn't even take on this project without having one of his guys who worked for him had to go and get their commercial contractor's license. So this guy Eric, like, literally went through all the testing to go get his commercial contractor's license just to build this project. Like, really, God moved through the hearts of all of the people in that organization in such a way to bring them together to build this project for us. But part of the reason it was taking so long is because they were commercial or they were residential contractors doing a commercial project. And all of the vendors and subs that they were calling on to come in and help us and donate some time or donate material, they were residential. So here are our guys who are putting in. They call them the forms that you pour the cement into to build your basement, which, by the way, we did decide to put in. And they're like, oh, my gosh, we've never built 20 foot forms in our life. 20 foot hole in the ground. And we've got to put these cement walls into that hole to hold up the building. And they had never built forms. They call them to pour cement into 20ft, 20ft deep. And I'm like, that seems problematic.
Maybe we should have somebody who's done this before building a 20 foot basement wall. So we did end up getting a superintendent to. His name was Jim, which is so funny because in our new project for our early learning center, we have Jim, again, a different gym. But Jim came on board as our superintendent and things just started going much more smoothly. The project started going much more quickly. I just cannot say enough about meritage homes and their willingness to step up and, and homemade to do something completely out of the box. Not building a house, but building a 15,000 square foot building. And the day of our grand opening was literally.
It was magical. It was, like, so unexpected. It was like one of those mountaintop moments in your life where kind of you're just walking through a dream, like, walking through the building. I mean, unique. You're in the building every day now. But at that point, it was, like, empty. There wasn't. The furniture was in, but there that was. It was the furniture and some of the decor, and everything smelled brand new. We had just barely taken off, like, the little blue pieces of tape on the wall where the chips of paint had gotten banged when we were putting furniture in. I mean, it just. Everything smelled brand new. And. And I step out into the, like, parking lot where we were having this grand opening, and the ribbon had been run from, like, one end of the building to the other end of the building. And we're going to have this big ribbon cutting with, like, the giant scissors with the mayor, and one of our teen moms was going to cut the ribbon, and this parking lot is just filled. Like, my husband wasn't even there yet because he and our architect both had had to park, like, blocks away because there were so many cars and so many people and so many of our teen moms. I remember watching one of moms who by this point was, I think, 26, and she had one hand on each head of her twins, and she was just watching, and they were watching, and the twins had their hands put together, like they were praying or something. Like they were just so excited to be there and be watching this ribbon cutting happening for this brand new building. And it just was truly so incredible to get there, to be there and to be able to share with all the people standing there how God had done this. Like, it wasn't something that we could have done. We couldn't have raised the money by ourself. We couldn't have gotten the building finished without meritage. It was incredible how God had literally built this building for us the same way he had done the house. And it wasn't easy, and we had to be faithful, and we had to be obedient. And there was a whole so many times when you're hitting your head against the wall and wondering why you even started this, and are we really on the right path? But in that moment, it was like, this was what God intended for our moms. And to get to stand there and say, not just thank you to everybody in the crowd for the fact that they helped build this building, but really, it's what's going to happen inside this building that's so incredible. It's what's going to happen when moms like unique get to walk through the door and hopefully experience something that they haven't experienced before and be welcomed in a way, maybe they haven't felt welcomed before.
And so in a minute, we're going to talk about what that did actually feel like for unique. But we're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back. Back. And you're going to get to hear from Miss Unique, who you are going to love.
[00:12:31] Speaker C: Hi, everyone. It's Emmy. I'm the development officer here at Hope House. I'm so excited to share that. Our 11th annual Hope House five K in Fun Run is coming up on Saturday, May 4 at the Apex center in Arvada. Make sure you register soon because early bird pricing ends on April 18. All proceeds will go towards empowering teen moms. We have a beautiful paved course along the Ralston Creek trail. We'll also have a vendor village, live music and fun for the whole family. For more details, check out our events
[email protected]. Dot we can't wait to see you.
[00:13:02] Speaker A: There we are back. Episode two of Life reviewed. And you are now going to get unique. I can't wait for you to hear some of her story. Unique, tell me a little bit about you. Tell me about you and your daughter.
[00:13:17] Speaker B: Well, I have been almost a year in the residential home.
I've been trying to get my teacher's degree and being a lead teacher and having my own classroom. And my daughter, she's almost two in April. And we've just been experiencing life together and trying new things. And I've been working towards all my goals at Hope House.
[00:13:42] Speaker A: I love that so much. I love that unique is open to sharing about being a resident in the residential home because now today, it's the smallest program we have. It's the most, like, unique and interesting and like, in depth program that we have because our moms actually live here and we get to do life with them. But only six moms at a time can live in the residential home. And today we serve 250 teenage moms from across the metro area. So back when we had just the house and I was actually working with teen moms myself, I knew every mom so well and each mom obviously living in the residential program, all our offices were there. We knew each other so well. Now I don't know the vast majority of our teenage moms. So it's such a privilege to get to be in relationship with the moms in our residential program, because you're here all the time. Unique. And so I get to see her beautiful face, like, most days, and she's grinning at me with these big dimples, y'all. I wish you could see her face. She is just stunning and has, like, dimples for miles. Thank you. So, Yunique, tell me a little bit about the day you came to Hope House. How did you even find out about Hope House?
[00:14:50] Speaker B: Well, I found out about Hope House a while back, and I was just honestly afraid. Nothing could be that good. Like, I don't know if that makes sense, but I was terrified. I called and I said an orientation, but I never came because I was so scared. And I was like, I don't know if I can do this now. Like, I don't know if it's worth it. It could just be a big hoax. And so then I became in a situation where I really needed Hope house, and I felt bad even going when I really needed them most. But I also knew, like, this is what they said they were here for. And so I was like, I'm just gonna go with God. I was praying for months, and I just had such a bad breaking point, but also it connected me with God. And then right after that, I came here, and I was so surprised on how you guys treated me. I moved in, like, a week, two weeks after I applied for residential and also being a hope house mom. And I can't express how grateful that is and how rare that can be because I know you guys never accept moms that you've not known for at least a couple of months either. So it was just heartwarming, honestly. And I felt like I was home already when I first got here. I was crying because I was like, I can't believe this was all true. So I felt welcomed and I felt okay. And I wasn't okay for a long time.
[00:16:12] Speaker A: So that really just, like, warms my heart so much. I feel like we hear all the time from our moms that this just seemed too good to be true. Like, when they first hear about Hope House, it's like, wait, what? You can come and do your GED for free. You can work on your high school diploma for free. You can get free meals, free food, free childcare for my kiddos in our early learning program while I'm working on my GED. Like, that all just seems too good to be true. But I think it's that moment you walk through the door, hopefully that you feel something feels different here.
[00:16:46] Speaker B: Definitely.
[00:16:47] Speaker A: Something feels maybe I don't feel judged the way I felt judged. Like, in all these situations in my life, and I talk about this all the time, like, whether it's walking into the grocery store with Addie on your hip and somebody looking at you funny, like, are you that baby's sister or her mom?
[00:17:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:17:04] Speaker A: Or going to the doctor and having the doctor be downright, like, talk down to you and act like you don't know what you're doing.
Situations like you heard about in our first episode when I talked about the man who lived in our neighborhood who had just some fairly hateful things to say about teen moms. And it's like these crazy misperceptions and judgments that people have, which is what we're here to talk about. Like, how do we review and confront the way we think about certain people or certain things, and people have the idea whether maybe they've ever confronted it or not, that, like, what's in their head when they think about a teen mom like that? A teen mom, oh, she must have at the very least, made some bad decisions or at the worst, like, she's running around doing stuff she shouldn't be doing.
Somewhere in their head, they're, like, having these thoughts that then come out when we bump into them. And I remember those situations from when I was a teen mom myself, because I think teen mom judgment has been a thing from day one of teen moms.
[00:18:05] Speaker B: Definitely.
[00:18:06] Speaker A: But have you had any experiences you'd be willing to share that where you just felt judged?
[00:18:12] Speaker B: Well, yeah. When I first moved here, I've never been in Arvada before. And so when I first went to King Slooper's, everyone was staring at me, and I felt really awkward and out of place. And so I was like, okay. But. And then some instances with my family, they were very surprised that I was pregnant. They were supportive in my decision, of course, but they were very disappointed, and they just weren't the same. When I was pregnant, I had her, and then they knew that they couldn't do anything after that. But, yeah, pretty much. It's just like family judgment, social judgment, emotional judgment, even from people that, you know, especially in places past workplaces and current sometimes, just like, people like to tell you how you're parenting, and if they don't think you're doing something right, they feel the need to comment on it because you are a teen mom, and they feel like that since they are older, they get to be able to comment. And I don't think that's accurate a lot, you know? So it's so many situations that people choose to treat us differently just because we're young and we're also parents. And they assume because we're teenagers, we act like teenagers and nothing like parents because most people who are judging weren't a teen parent.
[00:19:32] Speaker A: Perfectly said. I mean, that's such a perfect example of how we can kind of review the way we think about things and even thinking that you're somehow being kind or helpful when you offer some advice or guidance in a certain tone to a teen mom because you think, hey, she needs it because she's a teen mom. But let me tell you, folks, I have never met anybody in my life who are so strong, so courageous, amazing problem solvers can do about 25 things at once. I tell people all the time, if you want to hire a really great employee, hire a teen mom. Because teen moms literally can do, like, they can leap tall buildings in a single bound. They will do anything for their little one. And they've learned how to balance so many things. And typically, they've overcome challenges in their life at a way younger age than most people have had to experience. So they're incredibly more mature than they're given credit for in just about any circumstance.
And I will say that includes you, unique, because you just turned 18 years old, right? Yes, I did. Yeah.
[00:20:40] Speaker B: Like a month ago in November.
[00:20:43] Speaker A: November.
[00:20:43] Speaker B: So before I even turned 18, I graduated high school. And then I also got my first full time job. I got my license and driver's license, of course. I've gotten so many things done, and I just turned 18. It hasn't even been six months since then.
[00:20:59] Speaker A: So, yeah, that's exactly what I'm talking about here. You are ahead of your peers. You graduated high school ahead of your peers. You're going to college ahead of your peers. You're working ahead of your peers. And yes, it matters that you have Hope house. It matters that you have a stable home and a safe place to be in order to enable you to do those things. But it isn't just the walls and the roof over your head and even the people that come around you, the folks who work at Hope House, who do love you so, so much. It has to come from within you. Like, it's what's within you that is propelling you forward at such a remarkable rate. And where are you going in life? What do you hope to be doing in the next few years?
[00:21:42] Speaker B: I'm going to be applying for college for next year. I believe it's for MRI technician. But I do have to do a lot of prerequisites beforehand, but it interests me a lot because I wanted to be a neurologist or a surgeon, but I don't think I could cut into someone's brain. It completely terrify me. So I decided on MRI technician, and also I can afford that with being a teen mom. So, yeah.
[00:22:10] Speaker A: So will you get a Pell grant to.
[00:22:13] Speaker B: I'm gonna apply. So I'm praying and I'm hoping and I'm gonna apply for FAFSA and all the grants that's possible because I don't want to be in debt and be a single mom because I can't afford that at all. So that is what I'm hoping for right now.
[00:22:27] Speaker A: So much wisdom, just like I said. And are you working with our college and career program as you kind of navigate that?
[00:22:33] Speaker B: Yes, I am. Yes, I'm working with Jamie at the moment, and we're just trying to figure out after FAFSA, I'm going to apply for Red Rocks Community college and get some prerequisites or apply, and I have to take a whole bunch of tests because my high school situation, I've moved back and forth a lot, so it's a lot of back and forth I have to do before I can even start college. And then also get in line with my partner. I can get a part time job instead of a full time because I can't be a student and a full time.
[00:23:01] Speaker A: And a mom.
[00:23:02] Speaker B: And a mom. Yeah. All at once. So it's everything that I have to balance out before I start, but that will be most likely right before I move out of Hope House, which is kind of scary as well. So I have to figure out all how to balance that together.
[00:23:15] Speaker A: Perfect example of all of the juggling and balancing that a teen mom is able to do, I have to say. And I said this to you, nique, actually, at the groundbreaking of our brand new early learning center, which I can't wait to tell all of the folks on the podcast about. But I remember at our groundbreaking, I think you'd only been at Hope House a couple weeks, or I hadn't really formally met you yet. And I remember just getting to come and chat with you a minute and being so grateful to have that moment to meet you because at the time, you were 17 and Addie was maybe a year and a half.
[00:23:47] Speaker B: She was almost one. She wasn't even one yet.
[00:23:50] Speaker A: She was baby. And just getting to tell you, like, you're the girl we built Hope house for because.
[00:23:57] Speaker B: Yeah, I remember that. I remember that.
[00:24:00] Speaker A: So you're 17 with a baby, and there literally is no other home in the metro area that will take a parenting teenage mom. And so we exist for you, for unique. So to get to hear kind of your journey as you've gone through earning your high school diploma, which I think if you all could have heard her, like, hollering through the hallways of Hope House the day she got her diploma. And we love to celebrate at Hope House. What do we do to celebrate? You tell us.
[00:24:27] Speaker B: You made a whole graduation for us, basically, because I don't think Penn foster does actual graduations after we graduate. So you guys made it to where we actually felt like we graduated. And you got us caps and gowns, and you had a whole seating area for our family, and you even. We all had speeches and you spoke for us and everyone else did. And we had so much support, and we had a cake.
[00:24:52] Speaker A: Everything was amazing.
[00:24:54] Speaker B: It was so great.
[00:24:55] Speaker A: I love that so much. And the other thing we do when we celebrate at Hope House, we ring the gong.
[00:25:01] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:25:02] Speaker A: So we used to have this little baby gong when we were in our little baby resource center. When we moved into the big old resource center, our director of development, Lisa Schlarbon, she's like, we need a gong that, like, fits this building. So she purchased an orchestra gong, like, hangs on a frame and everything. So tell me about that.
[00:25:18] Speaker B: Yeah. Every time we accomplish something, you guys all get together, all of the staff in the building, and you guys have us ring the gong. You tell us what we accomplished, and then you guys all cheer us on. And that feels so amazing. You guys have done it for me, and then you guys have done it for all the moms that have done something that's so accomplished.
[00:25:36] Speaker A: I love it. I love that so much. We've actually rung the gong a couple of times for our brand new, amazing project that we're doing. So we are. We've. We. I probably should back up a little bit. We moved into the resource center in 2019 in September, and like, six months later, COVID hit and the resource center closed down for like, a week. I think the whole world closed down for at least a week. And we had to do a whole lot of, like, kind of emergency Zoom meetings with board members to figure out what are we going to do. We actually turned our residential program into an emergency shelter for a period of time for teenage moms because we just. We literally, within the first two days of kind of the word about COVID getting out into the public, one of our teen moms had pretty much our whole family blew up because anytime there's something really dramatic happening, like, in 2008, we had this terrible recession. They called it the Great recession, or COVID. Something in our society that's like, really big and scary, families that are already at risk just sort of splinter and become more at risk, and drinking becomes bigger and domestic violence gets worse and things just kind of get out of control. So in this young lady's family, things got out of control and she ended up sleeping in a park in a tube slide with her four year old and calling hopeass the next morning to say, like, I need help. And we were like, oh, my gosh, we had no idea what was coming. So we turned the residential program into an emergency shelter and closed down the resource center at first, but very quickly, like, literally within a week, we're like, we can't leave our moms out there with no help. Like, we can't not be there for them. But there were all these restrictions too, so what can we do? So for a little while there, all we could do was, we called it, like, the grab and go. You could drive through our parking lot and just stop and pick up bags of food. So, like, two staff members would come into the resource center and package up all this food and then put the bags out on the sidewalk outside of the building. And just 65 cars a week of our moms were coming through the parking lot to pick up food for those first three to five months. And then we actually came back in person. Partly we were so blessed because we had this big, huge building that we had built to serve up to 450 moms a year at some point in time. So we were nowhere near full. And the restrictions said that as long as you were less than 50% capacity and could keep the six foot like distance between each other, you could come back into work if you were an essential service. And we were considered an essential service. So we came back. Our staff was like, no way we're leaving our mamas by themselves. And so we would have one on one classes and have moms sit, you know, 6ft apart and across the room from the parenting teacher or whatever class they might be doing. So at least we got to come back and be with our moms. But there was a lot of fear. Like, how did you feel during COVID What did you feel like?
[00:28:24] Speaker B: I wasn't even a mom yet.
Yeah, it was very isolating.
[00:28:29] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:28:30] Speaker B: And a lot. It drove our family a little crazy.
My brother got COVID and he had to be in his room for about almost three months because it wasn't out of his system. He was still positive, and he was also contagious, but he didn't have any symptoms except for, like, a stuffy nose. But he had to stay in the room for three months. And I felt so bad.
[00:28:51] Speaker A: Yeah, it was a crazy time for everybody. And unfortunately, what we've seen for teen moms, kind of across the board, is that it created so many more challenges, so many more. Like we always say, the top three barriers to self sufficiency for our teen moms are housing, childcare, and transportation. And what we've seen with COVID is there's a fourth challenge, and that's mental health. Mental health has just become such a huge thing. Like, our moms suffered a lot during COVID and struggled in a lot of situations that just really impacted their lives.
And so we've had to really build out how do we support our mamas in new ways, whether it's from offering yoga or a chiropractor who comes in and volunteers their time to additional healthy relationships, classes, additional counseling.
What have you participated in at Hope House besides earning your high school diploma, which is amazing, and now getting support with college and career, and, of course, your housing, what other types of things have you accomplished or done here?
[00:29:55] Speaker B: I did parenting 101. That was so helpful. I was always so scared to do parenting 101 because a lot in our culture and our family is we don't need our help for. We don't need people showing us or telling us how to raise our kids, which is not accurate because it's not necessarily someone telling us. It's someone helping us understand our children in ways we should understand them, just like natural behaviors. What would help? If we're struggling with something, it makes us understand what they need and what they want.
I went to renting 101. That was so helpful because I had no idea of anything about leases or renting or how many people can take control of you over leases and renting and how much money it cost and how fast rent can raise, which is very scary for a lot of teen moms because we have just this certain amount we are able to afford.
I went to housing and credit, and I had no idea what credit was. I knew some of the information about it, but I didn't really know anything that I should know. And that helped me so much because I could have gone very low on my credit and I wouldn't be able to afford my own home. I haven't gotten to get an actual credit yet. But now that before I could even get one I know exactly what I'm supposed to do before I'm not in a good situation. So that was great.
[00:31:21] Speaker A: I love that. I love that. Just like our podcast that you, that is life reviewed like you had a certain view or grew up with a certain view of getting help, period. But certainly getting help with parenting or coaching around parenting. And we're able to kind of review that in a different way and now feel like you're a stronger mom for Addie than you might have been. So as we get closer to wrapping up and I want to share kind of a where we are in our path at Hope House, and then I want to end finally with asking you where you are in your path, like something that you some memory or some moment at Hope House that captures Hope House. So I'm going to share kind of about where we are with our early learning center. While you think about that a minute, like, what moment captures Hope House for you better than anything?
So I am so excited that our early learning center is going to be able to serve 104 children of our teen moms and our staff. And we're opening in August. We're on track for an on time and on budget project, which never happens in construction. And it's going to be literally amazing to have a building full of little ones that are going to be learning and growing and developing and learning how much Jesus loves them, getting to take that home to their mamas. We're opening in August of this year and we're just so extremely excited. And I can't wait to see the memories that are going to get made in that building right next door to our resource center. It's incredible to me that we've gone from in episode one being really this little tiny house that got moved and rebuilt to this brand new, huge resource center right on the same land. To now having this early learning center next door to the resource center. We have this campus, and the word campus just feels like, whoa, how did I even get here? Like, who am I that God would let me be a part of this? It's like so incredible to me, and more than anything, incredible is to get to be a part of your life, unique, a part of your story, even just a little bit, because you're one special lady and I love having you here. So share just maybe one thing with us that, like, sticks out to you as like, this is Hope House.
[00:33:43] Speaker B: Well, I'd say the 20 year anniversary when you guys all celebrated together and how all of the moms showed up for you guys and showed up just to represent what? Everything has come together and your champions coming. Everyone that showed up just made everything feel really good because you guys were celebrating. And Brittany, she's a staff member here, and then she was there, and she used to be a mom here, so it was just like, wow. Like, so much has changed, and I can't believe I'm a part of this. Like, this is something really big and really important. So I was like, this is.
[00:34:20] Speaker A: Yeah, I love that so much. That is. Outside of the grand opening, my favorite memory ever was standing on the stage of the gala with 20 of our moms, from their very first teen mom, Fendia, down to Makai, who had little Lucas at the time was so tiny, and one mom for every year of our existence in 20 years. And to hear Fendiya talk about what she's doing now as a nurse and her daughter, who's now 19, going to Metro and becoming a psychiatric nurse, to Brittany, who was a resident in our home and is now our housing support program manager here, and her daughter, who's getting a college scholarship to play volleyball in college. And down the row, each of these moms, who had literally broken the cycle of poverty for their child the way they set out to do, not just for their child, but for their children's children. And I love that that's your favorite memory, because I share that so much with you. That just was an incredible opportunity to see how God can take that mommy motivation at a moment in time where you're feeling super scared, super nervous, super, like, how this is too good to be true, this whole hope house thing, and add a little bit of hard work from that mom or a whole lot of hard work from that mama, and all the love and support and compassion of our staff, and you actually end up with young women who have truly done what they set out to do, which is break the cycle of poverty. So I just love it. Thank you so much for being here with us today. Thank you for sharing your story.
[00:36:07] Outro Music: About you, o precious soul. The things I didn't know. The things I didn't know about you, about.
