When Veranda Rodgers got pregnant as a teenager, her life could have gone in the direction most do in that situation: poverty and struggle and dreams of a better future dashed.
But she didn’t want what for herself and she doesn’t want that for other young women dealing with pregnancy at an inopportune point in their lives. So when she managed to climb her way out of the seemingly inevitable hole such a pregnancy can put women in, she launched a nonprofit, the Pregnant With Possibilities Resource Center, in 2015 to lend a hand and pull others up behind her.
Despite getting pregnant when she was just 16 and having her first child while still in high school, Rodgers finished college at Cleveland State, got an MBA, accumulated experience in marketing and event management, and teaches business courses at Tri-C. Now in her early 30s, she’s married to the man she had her child with and has a second son, who’s five. She’s made a success of her life by any measure.
“I looked at my family dynamics and I saw that life stopped for a lot of people in my family,” she says. “I was the first to get a college degree and a masters. I wanted to go back into the urban community and touch young women who felt life had stopped for them.”
Pregnant With Possibilities offers a range of services for pregnant women and women with young children, ranging from pregnancy prevention information, to life skills workshops, to providing transportation, diapers and clothing for babies.
Rodgers says the organization has served more than 3,000 women (and their children) so far. Its work helps to address infant mortality, which is a crisis in Ohio’s black community, but goes well beyond that basic, essential goal. “It also helps make mothers a success,” she says.
“Our goal is to break down barriers to address their needs,” says Rodgers. “Every program starts with self-love because if you don’t love yourself, you can’t love someone else. You are the product of what you see so our goal is to change that mindset. Ours is an intergenerational approach — mothers, kids and future kids. We want to our mothers and children feel comfortable and relieve stress.”
Until recently, much of the group’s work has been done in schools, including engagement nights at Cleveland Metropolitan School District Schools, and in the community, information tabling at events. Now it has an office/meeting space in a small office complex in Maple Heights and has plans to expand services to other communities.
Rodgers emphasizes that Pregnant with Possibilities focuses on the “possibilities” aspect of young women’s lives.
“I always ask them, ‘Would you want your child to be where you are today?’” she says. “Do you see a future with the person you are today?”
Learn how you can help at pregnantwithpossibilities.
