On Thursday, April 20, 2023 we hosted our annual Night of Storytelling – a night filled with shared stories and conversation with Magnolia Mother’s Trust moms and Angela Garbes, the award-winning author of Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change. You can watch a recording of the event below.
The Magnolia Mothers Trust
2024 Night of Storytelling
On Wednesday, April 17, 2024, we hosted our annual Night of Storytelling – a night filled with shared stories and conversation with Springboard To Opportunities’ mothers and Dwayne Betts, a 2021 MacArthur Fellow and Executive Director of Freedom Reads. You can watch a recording of the evening below!
The Magnolia Mother’s Trust Featured on The Kelly Clarkson Show!
Exciting news! Our CEO, Aisha Nyandoro, and Magnolia Mother’s Trust Recipient, Sequaya Coleman, were featured on an episode of The Kelly Clarkson Show! Watch the full video below!
Aisha’s TED Talk is Here!
“Wealth is about a sense of agency, a sense of freedom, and being able to care for the collective whole.”
Last week, our CEO, Aisha Nyandoro, took to the TEDWomen stage to ask us all if we are brave enough to reimagine what wealth looks like in this country. Through a powerful personal testimony, the stories of Springboard families, and the results of The Magnolia Mother’s Trust, Aisha challenges us all to listen more deeply to the stories of families living in poverty and create new narratives, policies, and systems that can disrupt poverty and actually support families as they build wealth according to their own definition.
We are thrilled to announce that Aisha’s dynamic TED talk has officially been publicly released.
We hope you’ll take some time today to watch it yourself and share it within your own networks, too. Pass it along to 3 more people to watch, and ask them, “What does wealth truly mean to you?” We need to start a conversation about what wealth means in this country, and that starts with us in our communities.
We are grateful to count each of you as a partner on this journey and look forward to continuing to grow this movement of centering family voice and pushing for a trust-based social safety net system alongside each of you.
The 5th Magnolia Mother’s Trust Cohort is Set to Begin!
We’ve got some big news!
We are so thrilled to announce our 5th cohort of The Magnolia Mother’s Trust (MMT), our guaranteed income program offering $1,000 per month for 12 months with no strings attached, will be launching in October. Over the past several months, we took some time to really analyze the data and feedback we have received from past cohort members and evaluations. Our commitment to being radically resident-driven means we never stop growing and never stop learning alongside our families. As their needs shift, our responses must shift too.
This year’s cohort will be our largest yet with over 100 mothers and will continue to include $1,000 deposits in 529 Children’s Savings Accounts, opportunities for community building, and goal-setting support. But we will also be adding new elements to help make the program even stronger.
For example, we have seen the importance of mental health and self-care support, like we offered through our MISS Program, and how the strengths of that program complemented the strengths of MMT. In response, we’ll be integrating the MISS Program into MMT for interested participants. We also heard families ask for more ways to build savings and education around wealth building. So we’ve created a built-in savings option that moms can opt-into and have increased our support around the 529 investment accounts and education on other wealth-building products.
The Magnolia Mother’s Trust has always been about reimagining what is possible: What’s possible when we give families cash? What’s possible when we trust families to make the best decisions for their own lives? What’s possible when we stop believing the way things have always been is the way things always have to be? Through the program itself we model what’s possible when we’re responsive to family voice and willing to try bold new ideas.
CEO, Aisha Nyandoro, testifies before the U.S. House Ways & Means Work & Welfare Subcommittee
“With so many families in poverty, we come in telling them what it is that they need or what they don’t need or how they must govern their lives. We tell them to take their baton back. But we shouldn’t have their baton to begin with.”
Dear Partners,
Yesterday, I had the opportunity to share the impact of our work in front of the House Ways and Means subcommittee on Work & Welfare, where we discussed the need to reimagine the current TANF system.
As I told Ranking Member Danny Davis, the current system is like putting a band-aid on a geyser.
For years, we have wanted to share with lawmakers the stories of our families, their experiences with programs like TANF, and their insights and expertise that could make them better. I am grateful for the opportunity to have done just that.
Through powerful stories from our families and the successes of The Magnolia Mother’s Trust, I was able to show that programs centering dignity, trust, and family voice can provide powerful alternatives to our current paternalistic and punitive safety net programs. While the focus of the hearing was on recent stories of fraud, it was also an opportunity to challenge legislators to think beyond the current structure and protocols of TANF and reimagine a program based on family’s expressed needs and expertise.
As I said yesterday, “We keep talking about doing an audit of financial spending. How about we actually do an audit of what a family’s needs are? How about we actually have a panel with families to say what is it that they need? What are you dreaming of, and how can we meet you there?”
Once again, I’m honored to have had this opportunity and am continuously grateful to you all for your continued support and belief in the work we do at Springboard To Opportunities. Let us continue to work together to uplift the voices of families and reimagine programs like TANF by taking ourselves out of the equation and instead putting families at the center.
Yours in Service,
Aisha Nyandoro
CEO