Parenting isn’t easy and parenting alone is even harder. PEARL — a faith-based organization dedicated to helping single parents achieve economic and emotional stability - welcomes its new executive director Donna Rippey to help.
PEARL began in 2008 to help single parents build a new future for themselves and their families. These parents are usually involved in some form of higher education, Rippey said.
“The focus is not just a hand out, but a hand up,” Hal Bagley, PEARL board chair.
Through the Focus PEARL program, single parents, who are also enrolled in higher education, meet regularly with PEARL staff to assess the needs of their family. This can range from help with car repairs to grocery gift cards.
PEARL prides itself on being able to help parents where and how they need it by filling in the gaps left by other established services. One of its programs is finding cars or car repair services for single parents to ensure they are able to meet their transportation needs among others.
“The variance of help depends on what they (single parents) need from us,” Rippey said.
“We hang with them until they graduate from whatever program it is and get into the better paying job,” Bagley said.
“The goal is once they graduate they are going to be self-sufficient, sustaining and not have to depend on assistance,” Rippey said.
Beginning her nonprofit career at the Boys and Girls Club in Illinois, Rippey is excited to begin this new chapter of her life, she said.
Rippey lived in Illinois at the beginning of COVID and greatly desired to live somewhere warm to the point she had sold her winter coat, she said. She began searching for jobs in the southern U.S. but struggled to find a good fit. A friend invited her to Longmont to visit and she immediately knew this town is where she belonged, she said.
She found a listing for PEARL and immediately applied.
“The mission in which they serve is one I can get behind. I have always been a huge supporter and a huge proponent of helping those who are helping themselves,” Rippey said.
Rippey is the second in her family to hold a higher education degree and has grown up watching other family members struggle through life. The biggest frustration, she said, was watching people she cared for receive services when they were in a low, but being completely cut off when things began to improve.
“In order to end the poverty cycle, you have to see a way out,” Rippey said, adding poverty can last generations. “We want to help them find that way out, to encourage them to find better.”
Currently, the organization serves 14 families. Rippey hopes to gradually grow that number until PEARL can help most of Longmont’s struggling single parents. But most of all she is committed to connecting PEARL to others in Longmont and to discovering new ways to assist the families the nonprofit serves.
“Donna brings organizational and outreach experience that will serve our single parents and their children well. We experienced a lot of growth during the pandemic and Donna brings the expertise for our broader and diverse client base,” Bagley said.
Correction: Mispelling of Rippey's name and she is from Illinois, not Indiana.
