The St. Joseph YWCA received a Community Connections Grant through Mosaic that will help in serving more teen parents and their babies.

YWCA Teen Parent Services Coordinator Traci McChristy said there are approximately 135 teens who have a baby per year in the community and McChristy said their goal with the grant is to be able to help serve 85 teens per year.

McChristy said the Healthy Teen Parents/Healthy Babies program will not only focus on health, nutrition, exercise and meal preparation, but will also help with the basics.

“These moms are not only moms, but they’re also going through all the same teenage stuff that every other teenager is going through and so it’s just a lot to handle,” McChristy said. “They’ve got doctor’s appointments for themselves, they’ve got doctor’s appointments for their babies… school, homework and just a lot of things that they’re trying to figure out that we want to help guide them through.”

McChristy said part of the program includes providing mentors for the parents.

“The mentors are just another person that’s there to support them and help guide them, connect them to resources and be there for their ups and their downs and help them get through it,” McChristy said.

McChristy said in addition to looking for area residents who want to be mentors for teens in the program, they are also accepting designs for a new logo for the Healthy Teen Parents/Healthy Babies program.

“We ask that everyone put their minds into creative mode and help us come up with a logo and we are going to be putting that on our welcome t-shirts for the girls when they come into the program, we’re going to put them on water bottles, because we’re going to promote drinking more water, we’re going to put it on our brochures,” McChristy said. “We’ll make sure to recognize the winner through social media and… hopefully that can help somebody with their portfolio, if they’re someone who’s needing that, or they’re just creative and want to share.”

The deadline for submitting a design is Friday, October 6th. The artwork must be emailed to Traci McChristy at [email protected]. Computer designed logos must be submitted as a high-quality .jpg or a similar file for easy opening and sharing.

For more information on the Healthy Teen Parents/Healthy Babies program, click here.