COLLEGE TO CAREER HELPS SINGLE MOM ACHIEVE SUCCESS
Living at Warren Village turned her life around. Now she hopes to use her education to help others.
After her first child was born, Jasmine White struggled through periods of homelessness, only relieved by time spent in shabby housing.
Postpartum depression weighed on her mind. The father of her child wouldn’t help with the bills. She was robbed, at gunpoint. Her life felt out of control.
She was ready for a change and took a friend’s offer to fly her to Denver in 2015. The move sparked the change she was looking for: Today, White is well on her way to earning an associate degree at Community College of Denver, through the College to Career program at Warren Village.
“From the moment I moved in here, my life changed for the best,” said
White, who is 28 and lives at Warren Village with her two children, 8-year-old Jordyn and 3-year-old Carmyn.
Warren Village was established in 1974 in Denver’s Capitol Hill neighborhood to offer single-parent families temporary housing and child care as they work toward self-sufficiency. The nonprofit also provides instruction on writing résumés and cover letters and offers interview practice and other workforce development help.
But in 2014, Bank of America contributed a $200,000 Neighborhood Builders award that led to the launch of a College to Career program.
“What that did was take us to the next level,” said Ethan Hemming, Warren Village’s president.
CCD now offers college courses to residents at Warren Village, and at the college on the Auraria Campus.
College course work isn’t the only path to financial success, though. Warren Village also routes clients into occupational training for certificates in dental hygiene, medical records coding, paralegal jobs and other employment.
“The majority of our residents focus on college attainment, but we see certificate pursuit as an important support area as well,” Hemming said. Last year, nearly 20 percent of residents who left the program had attained degrees or certificates, and another 15 percent were on track to similar outcomes.
White has completed six semesters at CCD and expects to receive an associate degree in human services in 2019.
The support she received at Warren Village helped her overcome a fear of failure that she carried during her first semester. “I really wanted to give up. I didn’t do awful, I was still passing, but I had assumed I failed. One of the advocates told me my grades and I cried. Ever since, they gave me the encouragement to keep going.”
She plans to continue her education and attain a master’s degree in human services, which would qualify her to work a variety of jobs with organizations including government agencies, schools, churches and medical facilities.
“I just want to make the world better for people like us,” she said. “The majority of us don’t want to be on government assistance.”
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development recently approved her for a rentsubsidized apartment in Denver. She expects to move out of Warren Village by the end of October.
“I’m very nervous,” she said. Warren Village has been good to her. She has informed other members of the community there that “when the day comes to start my moving process, I will be over-dramatic.”
“I just want to make the world better for people like us. The majority of us don’t want to be on government assistance.” Jasmine White