The InTune Mother Project Presents…
PROJECT SHE @ South Hampton Estates
The following as an initial effort as community benefit agenda of, The InTune Mother Project (TIM) and South Hampton Estates. As residents of this budding community, my husband Melvin (The Community Painter/Advocate) and I (Community Coordinator) are grateful to the owner and management team for the opportunity to present a much needed program for our growing community. By offering your general support, this ensures the commitment of our services to the community and surrounding areas that we seek to serve. Thank you for taking the time to learn more about our vision and plans for expanding the philanthropic scope of our services, here in the community in which we live. We value the opportunity you have given us in support of this effort to present our programs to those whose willingness to partner with our community education and outreach services can thrive. It is our goal to expand our network of partners within the maternal health, women’s wellness, and family planning communities as advocates, consultants, and educators. We are also happy to become a part of a community collective as a young family and grassroots organization, who is currently making good social ground. It is our ultimate goal to join the B-Corp industry along with 1000 other companies and organizations focused on not only economics, but also environmental and social change. It is our objective to be more than a standard business model, but also adding a social solution the community which is right here in our own backyard. So we ask for your support in this effort by offering the community more that a front door and patio. We have young mothers, grand mothers, fathers, children and other familial structures in this community. This is the base for a successful thriving community.
The bond of the family unit is the soul connection of TIM and the birth of the MELs (Men of Extraordinary Leadership) for social empowerment among the father frequency.
WHO ARE WE:
For over seven years we have been a part of the Homebirth Community. My husband and partner of nine years, and our three sons (RaMel 6, Logan 4, and Bryce now 18 months) are thankful for the substantial education and resources that have provided the needed balance and security for our familial success, minus the financial setbacks we ourselves are overcoming. As healthy childbirth advocates we are passionate about issues as it relates to emotional and social health and wellness in vulnerable communities. It is our goal to show how this process under healthy concepts, positively affects the structure of the family unit. Melvin and I are applying our skills, experience, and passion towards helping in a larger percent of our disconnected community of women and men to forge positives maternal and paternal futures through empowerment education tools. The InTune Mother Project provides a comprehensive program linking education, meaningful insight, and empowerment for women of diverse communities, but particularly women of color, as it relates to health and wellness, through various products and services. These are the women that we now live among. It is our goal to create a broader image of value in the community of South Hampton Estates (SHE) by partnering with dynamic organizations in the surrounding communities. Premised on the belief that substantive support can be a powerful catalyst and incentive for men and women all over, but specifically the population of color. In this platform, TIM assists women and men, with becoming well equipped with a full spectrum, natural, risk free, service, which is set on high standards, positive social impact, and friendly to the environment. For families to be given healthy options, there has to be strategies that provides a demonstration of how important a positive community environment is to better social outcomes. Our commitment to serve these families helps them to take the necessary steps towards familial empowerment. We seek to educe, self-directed, self-fulfilled, proactive individuals, with tools to become leaders within the community, by providing the best holistic information. Thus reducing the crime starting here where we live, within the South Hampton Estates Community.
THE NEED:
SHE (South Hampton Estates) has a wide number of residents upwards of 200 plus, which are majority women of color who are single and potentially exposed to domestic violence, and economic hardship. The ages range from infant to 64 years. This is a large social gap. There are a number of nonprofit organizations struggling to meet the needs of the work needed in this community. This is why TIM has created a sustainability component to maintain our company’s longevity and survivability to those we strive to serve. With the right forces we are looking to lay the groundwork to bring about the needed change within the community as it relates to men and women’s health and early childhood education. As a cooperative collection of networks, we can take advantage of educational resources, like (i.e., classes, programs, training, and life –skills assistance). Thus increasing resident dignity and secured housing.
TIM will play a unique role in the landscape of services available to the men and women from under-resourced neighborhoods beginning in the City of College Park, Georgia. Low-income men and women who seek programs are generally limited to two options: basic civic programs that tend to offer rote content which does not address the individual interest of the participant; or clinical programs that are more suited for high-risk individuals who have been identified by their socioeconomic and demographic background. Without meaningful information these people are left to rhetorical jargon, which does not give them the power to make informed decisions, nor to walk them through the milestones of defining their purpose, the same way privileged populations do. But rather leads them to a dead end track because, they do not have enough money or education to support their decisions regarding their health, education, or living environment for themselves, and that of their children.
Government and private funders have recently begun to demonstrate a new interest in commitment to serving this population of men, women, and children. While there may be a handful of organizations operating community wellness programs, many are established in conjunction with local hospitals and agencies that prescribe to rote practices. The families are cattle herded in and out, with many receiving the minimum standards of care, not like the community wellness initiative we propose. The families who enroll in our programs will not only receive innovative education, but also life-skills, and social empowerment training. This community where we live deserves to see something different. Those that we serve, are of a diverse population in this matter, many of the residents may or may not have a GED, proper maternal health access, and lack of workforce development programs, earning less that $35,000 per year. These have become the tradition, within the community of color. The struggle in the attempts to create meaningful relationships by connecting these families with our allies, products, and services, also by intersecting with global initiatives and leveraging our unique marketing concept, with strong organizations take a strong heart and a listening ear. TIM builds on an established model and method for creating a substantive program that will meet the needs of our community and channeling a new target market for organizations like Bright Path Youth Foundation, The Breathru House, and several others, with impactful social missions working in the Opportunity Zones.
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How it Works and Who it Serves
TIM works with a deliberate group of highly decorated community leaders who desire to participate in building this program to match interests, maturity levels, social interest, and experience. These professionals act as mentors who provide education and economic guidance. During the enrollment into the TIM program residents will receive 9 months (all inclusive), access to clean, safe, well equipped community centered care such as: (primary care education, summer programs, afterschool programs, and much more.) With your support, the SHE residents will also have access to life skills management training, first time home buyers training, nutritional education, instead of the generic, GMO laced, pharmaceutical grade foods they are accustomed to. The residents will have the ability to participate and attend individual classes, which will evaluate their experiences and continued learning, that allows them to exit the program with specialized training (some with certifications). Not just from a theoretical concept, but from positive lifestyle changes that are communally impactful and altogether a force of influential knowledge and social accountability. The InTune Mother will reach out to all program alumni for years to offer ongoing support and track outcomes through virtual resources. Upon participation, we will provide data rich information reflective to outcomes that develop around the use of our services.
While The InTune Mother Project will always strive to serve the community as a whole, it is vulnerable families, who come from households where hardships are present that we target. Some of these families are enrolled or affiliated with other state programs, we identify as partners that will help to create an environment for healthy, self-sustainable, communal outcomes. In one year InTune Mother has established relationships with several programs to serve over 200 women and children over the next six months. Partnerships and the number of participants will increase each year at a scale that does not compromise program integrity.
Leadership
TIM has developed a community education program with established linkages for the organization. Upon founding The InTune Mother Project, my husband Melvin and I went on to earn several certificates of completion at John Hopkins University (Primary Healthcare and Healthcare For All and Community Public Health) and Case Western Reserve University (Leadership Through Emotional Intelligence and Designed Thinking), both which are online programs through Coursera, to develop our ability to manage as well as better direct and increase resources to serve low-income communities of color in the rural and urban communities where we live. While attending these classes we launched The BOSS Method Workshops in late February 2014 where we presented to over 200 women at the 2nd Annual Birth Herstory Event. TIM has been managing all the protocol, education, and outsourcing, with the assistance of well-respected community leaders. The TIM Project wants to make a difference within the SHE Community. We feel strongly that the next step is to utilize our skills and experience to manage an organization that can act as a preventative for teen pregnancy, maternal death, and infant mortality as well as contribute to reversing the trend of a growing under educated, low-income, generation of women and families.
Outcomes
According to Merck For Mothers: “When a woman dies, the effects on her family are enormous: her baby is more likely to die before the age of two and her other children are up to 10 times more likely to leave school, suffer from poor health, or die prematurely. But it’s not just her family that suffers. A woman’s death also impairs her community. Their unpaid work contributes to economic life, accounting for as much as one-third of the world’s gross national product. Women are also more likely to reinvest their earned income in essential family needs like food, education, and medicine.” The community we live in falls into this category and we can be a solution.
Our average program enrollment is of 5 to 10 participants per month. We aim to grow to 30 participants to take part in the full offered programs per month, using the Affiliated Programs as a healthy incentive to community amenities. A summary of total outcome measures as follows:
- In all, we estimate at least, the various programs we offer at the TIM Center alone will serve at least 80 women, 30 women will be served through Bright Path Youth Foundation, and another 40 – 50 through other partnering churches and collaborating organizations.
- All attendees will be asked to complete and evaluation form immediately after completing the programs. We expect at least 80 percent of the participants will report their knowledge and skills increased as a result of attending The InTune Mother’s partnering programs.
- Every three months each participant will be evaluated through thematic aptitude tests. We anticipate at least 80 percent of the respondents will say that the training positively affected their concept of the community wellness experience.
- Within 12 months of the program, we will have a fully operational cooperating collective of networks within the major three counties DeKalb, Fulton, and Gwinnett for statewide project advancement.
We are pleased to publicly acknowledge South Hampton Estates as the supporting conduit for the social wellness, prenatal educational programs, enrichment programs for children and youth, and product contributions by including updates to our supporting partners on our “community events” homepage and in our e-newsletter, which is currently sent out to an audience of more than 3,000 subscribers and counting nationwide.
Conclusion
The InTune Mother Project provides women and families, with the motivation to pursue the option of a supportive, urban, conscious, education; with resources, information, skills, and experience that will enable them to focus on the process of a successful transition into society and parenthood. Whether bringing in other program initiates, to offer our community a new environment, to develop our community as a safe residence, with their own objective for strategic advancements or the plans for city participation… Melvin and I have centered our focus and support, on the prompt implementation of sustained community education right here at home at South Hampton Estates. We are happy that they found our services useful and suitable to create a community resource cafe’ for the residents to partake in these amenities.
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