How We Came to Be

The Young Parent Foundation, Inc. is a nonprofit foundation based in Tampa, Florida.  The foundation was established to offer a strategic 3-year program dedicated to young parents in need by offering innovative goal-oriented programs and connecting them with mentors who help them develop proven skills and tools necessary to become the best parent(s) that they can be. We work with teen and young expectant women, mothers and fathers, up to and through the age of 23, after which time eligibility for services is made on a case by case basis. 

The Founder of The Young Parent Foundation started the foundation as a way to give back to the community and express her gratitude for the people that she connected with who helped her through difficult times.  She grew up in a troubled and disadvantaged home and found herself pregnant, and temporarily homeless at the age of 16.   By the age of 23, she was a struggling single mother of three, without the experience, background or support needed to get by. 

Without family leadership, the founder learned quickly how the emotional, physical, and financial toll being a single working parent of three young children takes on a person. Without much money, little education and very few job opportunities, she struggled to make ends meet. Although there was help available, there were too few people willing or able to help her navigate the systems and get that help. Through those struggles she learned what it takes to succeed, raise her family and create a successful career path, ultimately leading to The Young Parent Foundation.

 
The goal of The Young Parent Foundation, Inc., is to provide a stable, healthy and loving community which through emotional, physical, spiritual and social support empowers young women and men to become effective and stable parents with the ability to lead productive and independent lives.  

Desmond Tutu once said “We need to stop just pulling people out of the River.  We need to go upstream and find out why they are falling in”  This quote spoke to the founder and what led her to promise to not only pull young people out of the river and find out how they fell in but to teach them how to swim.