Single Mom Strong

engagED voices feature key initiatives in the region to educate community members about the developments and critical work underway in our region. For this month’s feature, we talked with Single Mom Strong Founding Executive Director, Tara Taylor, about the organization’s goals and vision. Read on to learn more.

Please provide a high-level overview of the organization.

Single-parent families are an underserved and at-risk population who, without support, may experience disastrous health and socioeconomic outcomes that can affect future generations and balloon already burdened social service systems. Through early intervention, access to support systems, career advancement resources and innovative childcare solutions, Single Mom Strong dismantles the greatest barriers to single mothers’ success and ensures the health of these families. Our innovative blueprint deploys comprehensive resources that empower single-parent families, successfully improving outcomes.

Single Mom Strong (SMS) is a local nonprofit organization with a mission to empower single mothers and their children through enrichment, encouragement and educational programs. We improve outcomes for single-parent families by:

• Fostering connection: Having little to no support, the community aspect of SMS is one of the most important to single moms. At our 3-4 community events each month, our members find comfort in bonds built on their common experience.
• Increasing self-sufficiency and economic stability: SMS’s career advancement tools directly influence career success, from workshops to Pre-Employment Coaching and our free Career Clothing Closet.
• Overcoming the barrier of inaccessible childcare: Our EmpowerME Preschool & Childcare programs make quality preschool accessible by making it affordable, even on a single-income budget. Full-day childcare is also offered to school-age children during school breaks and closures.

How does your organization promote partnership and inclusion within the Greater Sacramento region?

As a long-term community resource, we collaborate with local crisis intervention programs, as the next step in support of at-risk families. We are proud to have reciprocal partnerships with over 20 regional family service organizations, creating direct connections when a local single mom has urgent needs, such as housing or food insecurity. Conversely, when a single mother exits a crisis intervention program, we are their resource for long-term support.

What is your long-term vision for this organization? How do you imagine it will evolve over time?

After spending several years creating and solidifying Single Mom Strong’s programs and services, we expanded our physical space in late 2022. With these projects complete and the pandemic behind us, our goal now is to increase utilization of all of our programs and services, so we may support as many local single-parent families as possible. As a relatively young nonprofit, we are proud to be serving over 800 local single mothers, but there are so many more to reach. Increased awareness of what our organization is and does will allow us to make the greatest impact. Additionally, we wish to make our low-cost, high-quality preschool and childcare programs even more accessible, by having EmpowerME Preschool & Childcare locations within a 15-minute drive of every local single mom. In addition to our locations on Arden Way and at Antelope & I-80, we will add locations in the Racho Cordova or Rosemont area and Elk Grove or South Sacramento area to achieve this.

Is there anything you’d like the community to know about this project, or any ways they can get involved or support its success?

As a small (but growing!), local nonprofit with a BIG mission, we cannot accomplish all we do without community support. We are always in need of volunteers, from our Men’s Mentoring Team, a once-monthly evening commitment where positive male role models create sustained, healthy relationships with children of single moms, to one-time projects like gift wrapping for our Holiday Adopt-a-Family programs, there are always ways to help! And, of course, donations are crucial to program success.

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