Talking It Over

For years, Sarah Clay supported her two children with low-wage jobs in child care and retail sales, relying occasionally on food stamps to make ends meet. Again and again, she was turned down for better-paying jobs because she didn't have a college degree. "I was running into a brick wall as far as being able to make a livable income," she said.

So, at the age of 42, the single mother decided to go back to school. Pell grants, student loans and academic scholarships covered the cost of her tuition. But there was still the issue of transportation. She lived more than an hour away from campus and had no money for gas.

Then, Clay heard about the Single Parent Scholarship Fund, a privately supported Arkansas program that offers grants of up to $500 a semester to single parents living at or near the poverty level who are also enrolled in college or vocational training programs. She applied for and received a scholarship that covered the cost of gas and maintenance on her car. While modest, the scholarship made a huge difference in her ability to do well in class and be a good mother to her young son and teen-age daughter. Clay graduated from the University of Central Arkansas in 1994 and earned a master's in social work two years later. She now works with children and families through the Arkansas Department of Human Services.

I met Sarah and four other women helped by the fund at a dinner earlier this week in Little Rock. The fund got its start in a northwest Arkansas county more than 10 years ago. Its founder, a man named Ralph Nesson, noticed that many poor, single parents were having difficulty going to college or vocational school to earn the degrees they needed to find better jobs.

Nesson, who worked in a community-action agency, discovered that a number of factors conspired against these single parents: the high cost of tuition and books, the absence of extended family or friends to help with child care, a lack of transportation and a lack of information about available scholarships and other assistance. So, Nesson and his colleagues raised a scholarship fund to help single parents meet the challenges of raising children and going to college.

I first heard of the Single Parent Scholarship Fund in 1989, when its founders invited me to help introduce the program throughout Arkansas.

Over the past seven years, local scholarship committees across the state have awarded 3,148 grants worth $1.2 million and have posted success rates that are the envy of many institutions of higher learning. Seventy-five percent of the scholarship recipients have remained in school or graduated from college, and 72 percent now have careers in fields such as nursing, education, engineering and social work.

I have met dozens of scholarship recipients like Sarah Clay who just needed the helping hand provided by the fund to keep them on the road to greater economic independence. They weren't people looking for a handout or a free ride but women eager to make the sacrifices and commitments necessary to further their education, acquire the skills they needed to succeed and improve conditions for themselves and their families.

The only thing standing in their way was the ability to go back to or stay in school.

Today, education is critical to every citizen's economic security. We live in an Information Age — an age when education can mean the difference between having a job or no job; between a decent job or a dead-end job; between a sense of fulfillment or a sense of futility.

Nearly one-third of all American families are headed by single parents. And at a time when a woman with a college degree can earn more than double what a woman without one earns, single parent scholarships are needed more than ever. They can be important tools in our efforts to help the many single mothers who are striving to free themselves from welfare dependence. For many of these women, a scholarship can offer not only much needed financial help on the long, hard road to independence but also a vote of confidence in their ability to learn and succeed.

There is no reason that this wonderful idea can't work in places beyond Arkansas. Single parent scholarships can be replicated in communities all across the country. Local businesses, foundations, churches, civic organizations and private citizens can join together to form their own scholarship funds and committees to help single parents in their communities lift themselves and their families out of poverty and off public assistance

The investment is minimal. But the rewards for the recipient and our communities are great. "I feel self-sufficient. I don't have to depend on anyone anymore," Clay said. "I've got the tools I need to be productive and to make a contribution to society. I have a real sense of freedom because of that."

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