Mosaic Ministries, Baby University Stabilizing Families in Toledo’s South End

 

TOLEDO, Ohio – Amidst the recent talk of a $5 million levy to fund universal preschool in Toledo, Mosaic Ministries is showing how effective a private group can be when it comes to preparing kids for kindergarten.

Mosaic runs Baby University a 10-week program where parents can learn best methods for dealing with common issues including discipline, stress, safety and health. A primary focus is learning effective ways to close the education gap.

Pastor David Kaiser says that many of the parents don’t know what they don’t know, especially in the Old South End neighborhood where roughly half the households are living in poverty.

“Kids in our area start the first day of kindergarten about 75 percent behind middle-class kids elsewhere in Toledo,” he said. “This is unacceptable. But the research shows us the problem starts much earlier. Low-income families are not preparing their kids for academic success. We could blame them for this – or we could help them.”

Kaiser also added Baby University is only interested in programs that work and steps that will lead willing families from dependency to self-sufficiency.

“Our belief – our steadfast foundation is that parents will prepare their kids for kindergarten if they know-how,” he said. “Baby University teaches the best practices in parenting, including reading to the children, developing greater empathy and learning to discipline in new, more effective ways.”

But Baby U, as they call it, isn’t just about the kids. Every parent who participates gets their own Parent Advocate. The advocates are certified community health workers who make home visits and answer individual parenting questions. All Baby U graduates have been connected to some kind of community resource through the advocates. Resources include food and clothing assistance, safe housing, and physical/mental health referrals.

Since its inception, they’ve graduated more than 600 parents through Baby U.

Their results:

  • 60% of grads reported never reading to their children prior to attending Baby U.
  • 100% of grads reported reading to their children more than 3 times per week after attending Baby U, and 62% of grads reported reading to their children every day.
  • More than a year after graduating, 92% of grads reported that they were still using the skills that they learned at Baby U.
  • Baby U grads tripled the number of books available to their children in the home.

But most importantly the pastor said is the  94 percent of graduates report that their children tested ready or advanced for kindergarten at age 5.

Additionally, the program has had a positive impact on premature births.

“In the Old South End, 30 percent of births are premature,” Kaiser said. “But among the Baby U graduates, only 10 percent are. These are kids starting a better life, more likely to succeed in school and more likely to hold jobs as adults.”

It’s all part of Mosaic Ministries’ “cradle to purpose” pipeline which they hope will eventually end generational poverty.

This week Mosaic kicked off their Beat Poverty campaign.

“Poverty is not beaten with disparate, single-focus efforts. Poverty can, and is being beaten in many places through long-term, family-focused efforts. The foundation of this movement is the priority on education,” the pastor said. ” The Beat Poverty campaign is centered on the day-to-day work with families to first get them stabilized and then help them develop the resources they need to escape dependency.”

The phrase “Beat Poverty” was chosen for two reasons: as a way for those not in poverty to help, and as a message for those in poverty to understand that they are not helpless.

“Each one has the ability to fight for their own freedom from generational patterns,” Kaiser said. “We are delighted to have lots of folks engaged in fighting their way out of this condition and providing for their own families.”

Margarita, who preferred not to share her last name, is one of the people Mosaic has helped.

Her parents were migrant workers. Her mother was a U.S. citizen, but her father was from Mexico and was “an illegal traveler to the states,” she says. She was born in New Jersey, but traveled all over – wherever the migrant work would take them. Growing up, she said they slept in barracks and would sit in the shade of the car while her parents would work in the fields.

It wasn’t until she was older that her mother settled in Texas while her father still traveled around for fieldwork. That was when she started school, but things were still difficult.

“Because of the instability, we were always just in an impoverished situation,” she said. “Financial discipline isn’t something that we practiced so we didn’t know about that. We were too concerned about just surviving, trying to figure out where the next meal was going to come from.”

While there was a lot of love in the house, there was also a certain amount of dysfunction, Margarita explained.

“My father was actually very abusive, physically and mentally, because he was an alcoholic,” she said. “I believe now, today, that was due to his lack of feeling like a provider that he needed to be. He watched his family suffer and that was hard on him.”

Margarita didn’t graduate from high school, dropping out after sixth grade. She didn’t have a job, lived in government housing and had gotten used to “ducking down” in the house whenever she heard gunshots. She was addicted to cocaine and alcohol and was “mentally enslaved.” She followed her mother, who was following a boyfriend, to Toledo when she was 21. She never married, but has four children with three different fathers. She lived on food stamps and relied on bartering with her neighbors for essentials.

“One of the hardest things as a mother was to see my children go hungry, and to have that inadequate feeling that I can’t provide for them,” she said.

Margarita was introduced to Mosaic Ministries through her daughters’ participation in the Beauty Project. With Mosaic, she got her GED.

Today she’s a Parent Advocate with 40 clients. “I’ve come a long way,” she says. “But with the help of Mosaic Ministries – they helped me establish a home. They helped me get a car. They helped me get a license. I’m finishing my bachelor’s in social work and then I’ll be going for my doctorate. All this transition has happened in the last eight years.”

Mosaic is currently renovating a 100-year old building that was abandoned in 1997. They will use it as a community center to continue their feeding program and hosting Baby U. Their plans include a charter school for the children of the Old South End. They have raised about half of the $1.5 million they estimate it will take to fully restore the facility.

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Maggie Leigh Thurber is a writer for The Ohio Star. Email tips to [email protected].

 

 

 

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