The challenge

Parenting is difficult enough when one or both parents are fully employed, but parents struggling to find jobs and support their families can find the challenge overwhelming. Of the low-income parents served by LIFETIME in Oakland, California, approximately 75 percent are single mothers. Some 80 percent rely on government benefits to support their families, and 20 percent earn wages low enough to classify them as “working poor.”

Many of these parents face additional challenges: They are recovering from drug or alcohol addiction, have recently transitioned from prison, or are immigrants still learning English. Nearly half have learning disabilities. Recently introduced welfare legislation, however, would limit parents’ access to education and training and, instead, allocate $1.5 billion for marriage-promotion programs for single mothers and increase weekly welfare-to-work requirements. Such proposals would make lives that are already difficult harder still. Approximately 80 percent of welfare mothers in California have experienced domestic violence; and, in the Bay area, 90 percent of parents who are reaching their lifetime welfare limit are already working. Most, in contrast to common perception, are in two-parent families.


Seeds of commitment

The leaders of LIFETIME have shared firsthand the hardships and triumphs that their clients experience. “As single mothers, each of us has struggled to raise happy, healthy, confident children in poverty,” they report. “As college students, we pursued higher education as the means to get our families off welfare and out of poverty. And as welfare mothers, we know that for parents like us, the welfare system is often the biggest barrier in our efforts to escape poverty.”

A motivation for their work is the knowledge that parents on welfare typically receive little support from their communities to enroll in, continue, or succeed in school. Relying on other parents facing the same realities is a standard, and often disappointing, strategy. The women behind LIFETIME accordingly say that they designed their grassroots organization to be “by, for and about low-income parents who want to pursue higher education as a means to get their families off welfare and out of poverty for good.” The women add: “We did this work because our families’ futures depended on it.”


Accomplishments

LIFETIME has trained many parents who have fought successfully to have their higher education count as a welfare-to-work activity under California's state welfare program. The organization has pressured the state to restore funding to the community college welfare-to-work programs, in the midst of California’s current budget crisis. It has created a parents speakers’ bureau, through which low-income parents participate in policymaking about welfare reform. LIFETIME also has organized a student-parent scholarship campaign to help parents continue in school after their welfare benefits end.

Such “people investments” have paid off. LIFETIME became the Bay Area’s top-performing agency in a $15 million national individual development account (IDA) demonstration project. The project teaches low-income people economic literacy and financial planning skills so that they can save money to invest in completing their education, buying homes, and starting businesses. LIFETIME’s leaders, who make decisions through a broad group process, are committed to helping all low-income families, particularly those who are on welfare or are the working poor, access education and training and find jobs that pay a living wage.


Their Leadership style

“None of us knew how to run a meeting, let alone build an organization or run a campaign, when we started,” the five leaders report. Nonetheless, as African-American, Latina, and Asian-Pacific Islander single mothers who struggled to complete college degrees on welfare, these women recognized the value of their own experiences as role models and mentors for other parents. They are firmly committed to the experience and expertise of low-income parents as the driving force of the organization. “Our life experiences are key to our understanding of what poor families need to achieve economic security,” they have written.

Consequently, their leadership style focuses on their strength: peer-to-peer support. LIFETIME “peer advocates” reach out to educate other low-income parents about their right to education under welfare reform. They help them resolve conflicts with the welfare system. And they encourage them to engage in community organizing, political education, and advocacy. At LIFETIME, organizational decisions are made by consensus, and all parents have an equal voice—an important consideration when working with disenfranchised communities. The LIFETIME leaders add: “When we empower a parent to challenge the system, it makes impacting state and federal welfare policies possible. Parents come to us for help but come back to get involved.”


The future

LIFETIME leaders plan to continue their work, but one key change for the future is their hope to recruit immigrant parents as leaders. Long-term, Diana Spatz wants to write a book about her experiences as a welfare mother and community activist. Anita Rees plans to earn a master’s degree in business administration with an emphasis in nonprofit management and a master’s in social work. Sylvia Cabrales hopes to enter the political arena. Leilani Luia plans to earn a master’s in social work and also would like to enter national politics. Heather Jackson wants to become a successful businesswoman, using her degree in accounting to help raise money for LIFETIME.


More about LIFETIME’s leaders

“Because of LIFETIME, the arena of discourse is wider. They contributed immensely in terms of bringing together child care, education and welfare policy. There are now groups in the [California] legislature that wouldn’t dream of having a meeting without calling LIFETIME. When issues around welfare reform come up, people will call them.”
— Roma Guy, President, San Francisco Health Commission