Struggling Mother Credits Friends for Kids for Changing Her Life

 Laura Sims (right), Friends for Kids program director, with Christina Godfrey, during a coupon clipping session. Christina says that she saves money every month by using the budgeting skills she has learned and by using coupons. She credits Friends for Kids for the skills and self-esteem that have helped her regain control of her life.

 For many years, Christina Godfrey's first thought as she started each day was, How am I going to pay the rent and the utilities and put food on the table for my daughter? Christina, a self-employed single mother, was having difficulty making ends meet when she learned about Friends for Kids of Daviess County.

   Friends for Kids was originally designed to provide adult companionship to the children of single-parent households (or those in special circumstances). Adult volunteers spend two to three hours each week with a child to add positive reinforcement and stability to the child's life. It was soon discovered, however, that the parents of these children needed help, too.

   Laura Sims, Friends for Kids program director, believed that, although the children in her program were making great progress, so much more could be accomplished by also helping their parents. So the agency, with help from other agencies serving Daviess County, expanded programming to offer parents with individualized help with parenting skills, job-seeking and -keeping skills, budgeting skills, and other training aimed at self-improvement.

   Funding for the expansion was made possible by a grant from the Daviess County Community Foundation, whose trustees agree with Sims' assessment that improving the self-esteem of parents goes a long way toward improving their children's self-image and sense of self-worth.

   These days, Christina gets up in the mornings with thoughts of getting her daughter off to school or to her job as a hairdresser. There was a time when she occasionally needed public assistance to help keep her household afloat, but not anymore. "Since Laura Sims started teaching me budgeting skills and how to make my money stretch, I have not needed public assistance." says Christina. "Laura has taken me grocery shopping several times and showed me how to clip, organize, and triple coupons. This has helped my self-esteem knowing I can do it now."

   Sims says that teaching parents to provide for themselves is more important than just giving them what they need "in the moment."