H.E.A.R.T.S. helps teen moms become self-sufficient
Published Thursday, May 5, 2022
By Freda Freeman, Correspondent
Tameka Brown, right, founded H.E.A.R.T.S. to help teen parents.
DURHAM – When she was 19, a high school senior, and pregnant, Ay’Riqua Ingram said she doesn’t know what she would have done without H.E.A.R.T.S.
Helping Each Adolescent Reach Their Spark (H.E.A.R.T.S.) works with young parents between the ages of 13 and 22 to provide resources, education, services, and the tools they need to raise their children and to become self-sufficient. “If I wasn’t put on to H.E.A.R.T.S., I don’t know where I would be right now. I say thank you every chance I get. I thank God. I thank H.E.A.R.T.S. I thank my mom. I thank my son for being here, because if it wasn’t for H.E.A.R.T.S. or my child, I don’t know if I’d be here today,” Ingram said.
H.E.A.R.T.S. has provided Ingram with moral and physical support, including helping her secure food, a job, and housing. Ingram graduated from Southern High School and now has a job at Duke Hospital and a place for her and her son, Ma’Hari Gray, 2, to live.
“Their support is important because a lot of people think, ‘oh well, you’re a teen mom, you knew what you were doing.’ A lot of people look down on teen parents because the way society looks at it is you shouldn’t be pregnant at a certain age, so having that person or that group of people that is just willing to be there is so important. It helps to know there’s someone you can talk to; someone you can go to anytime for anything,” she said.
According to the North Carolina State Center for Health Statistics, about 7,750 girls, aged 15-19, became pregnant in 2020. According to 2020 census figures, Durham County ranks 44th in the state in teen pregnancy.
Tameka Brown founded H.E.A.R.T.S. to help teen parents graduate from high school so they can find jobs and support themselves and their child. Brown works to change teen parents’ mindset from “poverty to self-sufficiency.”
Brown said H.E.A.R.T.S. has a 92% graduation rate. More than 127 teen parents have participated in the program, and, of those, 72 have graduated from high school.
H.E.A.R.T.S., which will celebrate its 10-year anniversary next month, is this year’s recipient of the North Carolina Peace Prize. The Peace Prize, given by the North Carolina Peace Corps, honors a small community-based nonprofit organization with $1,000 and a recognition ceremony on May 1.
Devastated by how her best friend was treated when she became pregnant as a sophomore in high school, Brown wants to do for other young mothers what she couldn’t do for her friend. “When she became pregnant, she became socially isolated from family, friends, church, school, and she dropped out, and it hurt my heart. I researched resources to help her, and I couldn’t find any,” she said.
Brown said there are several community organizations that help moms 18 and older, but H.E.A.R.T.S. is the only one that helps mothers as young as 13. Brown started H.E.A.R.T.S. in 2012 while a teacher at Hillside High. With a degree in parenting and child development, she started out teaching teen moms parenting skills and the basic steps of taking care of a baby. However, she soon realized they needed much more.
Brown said if teen moms weren’t coming to school, it was because they were too tired from getting up throughout the night to feed their infants. If their grades were falling, it wasn’t because they weren’t smart, but because they were feeling overwhelmed. To keep teen moms in school, Brown branched out into tutoring, mentoring, providing child care, and connecting them with community resources.