(The Dallas Examiner) – With a struggling economy, the U.S. is experiencing inflation in the cost of food, housing, health care and education. The high cost of living has affected all families, financial security may not be there, especially for underserved communities and single mothers.
The nation’s poor account for 70% of the all women and children, with single mothers being the highest risk to experience poverty, according to organizations such as the Legal Momentum, which is considered the nation’s first and longest-running legal defense and education fund for women.
The nonprofit Ascend Dallas has been working with women to combat this issue since 1908 – helping overcome poverty and rebuild their lives through its workshops and programs by focusing on empowering women to fight poverty and impact future generations.
The group primarily works with underserved women across the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, especially in communities where the poverty rates are some of the highest in the state of Texas.
Ascend Dallas Chief Executive Officer Kate Rose Marquez and Senior Director of Economic Advancement Selma Welsch said their team partners with nonprofits throughout Dallas to help assist families, with a focus on women in need such as pregnant women and single mothers.
Marquez said that the organization focuses on two main programs such as the Nurse Family Partnership and Economic Advancement program.
“The Nurse Family Partnership is a national evidence-based program that’s been around for 45 years, and it is a program that supports first time pregnant moms that are low income, and our criteria is that they need to be enrolled by their 28th week of pregnancy. They have to meet the income ceiling of qualifying for Medicaid,” Marquez said. “So when they meet those three criteria, they are matched with an RN. We have a dozen registered nurses as full-time employees, and then we have two registered nurses who are the supervisors, both manager and director. And those dozen NFP nurses carry a caseload between 25 and 30 clients at any given time, and they visit each of those clients about twice a month.”
She noted that the nurses are not a substitute for prenatal care but a supplement for moms who need them.
“These registered nurses work with the moms when the moms are pregnant to ensure healthy pregnancy and a lot of the low-income moms either don’t have access to adequate health care, or because they’re working hourly jobs, can’t get there during the hours, can’t take off. So the nurse works with the mom on nutrition, health care, parenting skills, safety in the home, preparing the home for the baby,” Marquez said. “We have three key indicators that show us that the mom is really following the recommendations of the nurse and really embracing the concept, and that is gestation period, birth weight and incidences of breastfeeding.”
Once the baby is born, the baby is also a client of Ascend Dallas.
“We stick with that mom and baby until the baby’s second birthday, and we work with the mom on the baby’s health, nutrition, immunization, social, emotional skills, against safety in the home and our demand is still our patient, because of that disproportionate percentage of women of color who experience maternal morbidity and mortality postpartum.”
The Economic Advantage program – also called EA – is another important program. It focuses on financial coaching and literacy, as well as offers career coaching and development.
Welsch stated that Ascend Dallas saw their reach double in 2024 through Economic Advancement services with participants reducing their debt by an average of $2,500.
With the cost of living continually rising, nearly 50% of women do not have an emergency fund set up.
“We truly believe the client is in the driver’s seat and we’re in the passenger seat,” Welsch said. “We are that support. We’re that accountability partner. I am not here as a coach. Our coaches are not here to tell them what to do, but we’re going to give them the tools, the resources, and the education. I think most important is accountability and support when it comes to whatever their financial or career goals are. So, we work with men and women throughout the city of Dallas and the county of Dallas on financial goals, and it could be something like, I want to budget. I want to be able to save at the end of the month to I want to buy a home one day. Like I said, we’re asking thought provoking questions, questions that sometimes are very hard to ask, but we’re trying to pull back the layers.”
Other questions include: How do we help you gain this big goal you have? What small task can we do to help you with your overall big goal?
“So that’s how coaching works. We’re that cheerleader. We are supporting the small wins, like, ‘Yes, you saved,’ or ‘Yes, you only went out to eat twice this week and not four times this week.’ So we really want to celebrate the small wins to help those big achievements.” Welsch noted. “And that also applies to the career aspect. Yes, let’s apply to five jobs this week, right? Let’s keep that mobility up. Let’s keep that motivation up. Let’s see what is also Career Discovery. What do you really, truly want to do? What’s going to make you happy? And what do you value when it comes to your career? So we really try to dig deep in our education, our career, especially our career coaching.”
The program has four to five certified and trained career and financial coaches. Half of the team is bilingual, enabling them to serve different communities throughout Dallas County.
“We have quite a robust curriculum of classes that can be taken both in person at some of our partner agencies, but also we do a lot of virtual as well, and those are combined between coaching, the curriculum and the career development. Our clients can come in and kind of customize what they want to do. Some come in through coaching and then start taking some classes too that’s topic specific,” Welsch stated. “Then say that they now have learned so much from their coach and state that now I know that I want to get a better job, and I want to go from hourly to full-time employee and get health insurance. So we have some people that come in that way. We don’t really dictate how they use our services.”
The program is free, and workshops and classes include budgeting basics, resume building, conquering your debt, and mommy mindfulness and meditation.
“A lot of our clients, when they come to us, don’t even know what a credit score is, or understand how action or inaction could impact that score,” Marquez said. “One thing I think is really cool is our average relationship with our clients is two and a half years because you don’t take a class on a Tuesday and your practice score goes up 30 points on a Thursday. You don’t vastly impact your financial portfolio profile. It is long, steady, and careful and so that’s one of the things I think is great. When you have a coach. It’s not like, like when you call, you call a vendor and want to talk to them, and you feel like you just told your story to a different guy last week, and then I got to start all over again, and I got to explain what this is again. You’re assigned a coach, and your coach is your coach. …. So you develop that accountability, and you develop that relationship and that trust.”
Another critical course the nonprofit focuses on is Tax Credit Education especially with the tax filing deadline approaching in April.
“Many people don’t know there are so many tax credits out there, and there’s a lot out there that we just don’t know,” Welsch said. “It’s not publicized; it’s not shared. You’re going to have to do your research. But we do offer a tax credit education through Edison Dallas, that kind of walks through all the major tax credits. … It’s a lot of education, also referring them to different VITA sites as well, to help them with their taxes. They’re not paying someone to do their taxes and just keeping them aware of all the tax credits.”
Last fiscal year, 95% of the clients served were women of color – 75% made $48,000 or less annually and about 65% were single, head of household.
“The vast preponderance was not just Southern Dallas,” Marquez said. “But anyone can take our classes, anyone can have a coach. We focus on that area, because that’s where our clients live. And we have tremendous relationships with other nonprofits. We work with other nonprofits where we refer clients back and forth, but we also go on site. There were over 47 agencies that we did on-site programming with and the preponderance of the clients we get are from other nonprofits. We are on site at Vogel Alcove. We’re on site at Red Bird. And we’re on site at St. Philip’s school.”
Welsch said what makes their program effective is how they personalize each client’s needs. For those needing help, Marquez said people can visit https://wingsdallas.my.site.com/clients/s.
Marty Jackson, an African American female executive of Coca-Cola who grew up in poverty relying on government assistance and became a single mom herself with five children, was a graduate of the program. She was able to break the cycle of poverty after taking the courses Ascend Dallas, according to Marquez, and now is a coach that teaches a class on overcoming poverty through different courses.
“Marty Jackson grew up in Section 8 housing, and she swore she was not going to end up like her mom,” Marquez said. “However, she had five kids and lived in Section 8 housing, and she was a client of ours, and she turned her life around. She ended up going to college, and she’s now an executive at Coca-Cola, and this is what I really love. She’s a volunteer who teaches our classes. A lot of our clients first looked at her and saw her in a business suit and were thinking, what does she know? And she just leaned right in. She goes, ‘Let me tell you something. I bet you guys are thinking to yourself because she’s in the suit, I bet you’re thinking, I don’t know what you know. I haven’t been through what you have. But let me tell you, I have.’ And she told her story. And it was fascinating to watch these women see that they could do the same and break the cycle of poverty.”