Jeremiah Program convenes local leaders to discuss policy pressures facing single mothers

Jeremiah Program (JP) hosted “A Community Conversation” Sept. 25 at the University of St. Thomas’ Schulze Hall, bringing together JP leadership, alumni and community members for a panel discussion and audience Q&A on the mounting economic pressures facing single mothers ahead of policy changes taking effect this fall.

Chastity Lord, JP’s president and CEO, opened the event by naming the moment directly. She said the conversation was arriving during what she called a particularly challenging year for Minnesota, the Twin Cities and the country as a whole, and she asked attendees to hold the discussion with that context in mind.

Lord pointed to Oct. 1 as a key date, when SNAP and Medicaid cost-sharing requirements shift so that states take on 75% of the administrative responsibility, up from 50%. She said families are entering that shift already navigating utility prices rising faster than anticipated, along with escalating food and housing costs. She framed the day’s conversation around three lenses: one’s own family, the families people are close to, and families more broadly, asking attendees to hold all three in mind as the discussion unfolded.

Amanda Luedtke, executive director of JP’s Minneapolis campus, spoke about the work of translating that pressure for people who aren’t as closely connected to single or student parents day to day. She said her role often involves helping people outside that experience understand what it actually looks like to navigate overlapping burdens around childcare, food, transportation and access to jobs, all while those pressures compound at once. She said many people already sense the strain through their own experiences, filling up a gas tank or shopping for groceries, but aren’t necessarily grounded in what it means to face all of those pressures simultaneously as a single or student parent.

Luedtke connected that educational work directly to the policy shifts ahead. She said the October changes to SNAP place a larger cost burden on states and add new administrative work requirements at the county level, work counties haven’t historically had to manage at this scale. She pointed to other states where similar changes have already led to eligible people losing SNAP benefits despite completing every required step, calling it a burden that effectively forces families to repeatedly prove they deserve to feed themselves. She framed her work as connecting that lived reality to policy solutions moving forward.

The event also included a reading from “The Student Parent” by Nicole Lynn Lewis, in which an attendee shared a passage examining how the U.S. tends to favor visible, convenient responses to poverty, like food and shelter drives, over addressing its underlying causes.

The conversation builds on work Luedtke’s Minneapolis campus has been doing for years. JP has served families since 1998, when founder Michael J. O’Connell recognized that women experiencing poverty face systemic barriers, from unstable housing to lack of child care, that make pursuing an education nearly impossible. The organization’s two-generation model rests on five pillars: access to higher education, affordable child care, affordable housing, empowerment and leadership training, and career development.

To join the program, mothers complete a 12-week Empowerment and Leadership course offered online, connecting participants across all nine JP campuses nationwide. Afterward, mothers can pursue an associate or bachelor’s degree with JP as a partner, supported by family coaches who guide them through the process. JP’s Minneapolis campus houses 39 fully furnished units across three floors, and the organization has helped more than 4,000 mothers and children nationwide since its founding.

For more information, visit www.jeremiahprogram.org/