Baby Steps program improves graduation rates
BY KADIE TAYLOR
THE OBSERVER
AUBURN — Baby Steps supports Auburn University students who are navigating an unplanned pregnancy, with the goal of helping these young mothers complete their degrees.
“Baby Steps is an Auburn-based nonprofit that’s been around for almost 10 years,” said the organization’s president and CEO, Cary Chandler. “We seek to empower pregnant and parenting college students… to have [both] their education and their baby by providing housing, community and support. When someone unexpectedly becomes a student mom, about 61% of the time, they don’t finish their degree. And the effect of that, long term, is an average difference in earnings of about $1.2 million, so that’s significant, and particularly if they are a single mom.”
Chandler said since its founding, Baby Steps has created a noticeable difference in graduation rates for AU students with unplanned pregnancies.
“We’ve helped over 200 girls in the last 10 years to get through college,” he said. “We have a home, the Auburn Baby Steps house. It’s in downtown Auburn, and we can house up to nine student moms and their babies there. We have an 83% graduation rate when they become residents of Baby Steps.
“We provide housing,” Chandler said. “But we also have a grocery stipend, we have community dinners, we provide counseling and we have a boutique that is full of donated items like new baby clothes, diapers, wipes and many of the other things they’re going to need to be moms.”
Chandler said Baby Steps was founded by a couple who wanted to help young people at Auburn, and the organization is now expanding to other college campuses.
“Baby Steps was started by Michelle and Matt Schultz because of their own experience having an unplanned pregnancy while students at Auburn 30 years ago,” he said. “I was a board member, and I joined last year as president and CEO to help them scale up and to try to meet the needs of other university communities, because there were so many that were saying, ‘Hey, we need one of those here.’
“The first one that we have successfully launched was in Tuscaloosa,” he said. “So as of January of this year, we have a Baby Steps house at the University of Alabama.”
Chandler explained that he began to volunteer with Baby Steps at Auburn because he watched one of his daughters navigate an unplanned pregnancy in college.
“Our second daughter had an unplanned pregnancy in college 17 years ago, and so we walked through that journey with her and saw her navigate the difficulty of trying to support herself, trying to study and trying to learn how to be a new mom at age 20, when it was unexpected and unplanned,” he said.
Through his volunteer CEO role, Chandler said he is excited to help Baby Steps further its impact to help other girls going through similar experiences.
“When I learned about Baby Steps, I thought, ‘Wow, it would have been so much easier for my daughter to have accomplished what she did had she had these resources available,’” he said. “So, we started becoming donors, then we got involved as volunteers, I started serving on the board, then I retired from my career in business and then Baby Steps asked me if I’d be willing to be a volunteer CEO, which is what I’m doing now.”
Along with all of the needs the Baby Steps program has worked to meet for young moms, there is also an Unplanned and Untold podcast where moms can share their stories.
“We have a podcast call on Unplanned and Untold, and it’s really outstanding because it’s the first-person stories of the student moms,” Chandler said. “A lot of these are people that we’ve helped over the last decade. We also have women who want to tell their stories from 30 years ago, 40 years ago or 50 years ago, having an unplanned pregnancy in college, and what it was like then when they didn’t have any support.”
After 10 years of supporting student moms at the Baby Steps at Auburn house, Chandler said those interested can donate items from a curated list to ensure that the moms and babies are able to live in an updated and refreshed space.
“Right now, we’re having the campaign to furnish the house with a refresh,” he said. “If you go to our website, you’ll find places where you can donate, become a monthly donor or a one-time donor to Baby Steps to support the mission and the services that we provide. Or you can go to one of the links there, and you can find items that you could donate to the Baby Steps house refresh.”
Donors or volunteers can also help by donating items that are used regularly by the student moms or by making a community meal for the moms to enjoy together.
“We also accept diapers, new baby clothing and things like that,” Chandler said. “There are a lot of ways to donate — goods, your time or funds. We have folks who make community meals and bring a meal so that the student moms and their babies can have a get-together once a week.”
Chandler said he is thankful for the community members who have helped support the Baby Steps at Auburn house, as well as the moms and babies whom it helps.
“The community has been so supportive,” he said. “A lot of the local churches donate out of their own funds to Baby Steps, and because they just see it as a group that needs to be supported. We’re non-political, and we’re non-religious. As an organization, we don’t take any kind of positions. We help whoever walks in the door who has decided that they’re having a baby and want to finish their degree. We’re there to help them walk through that journey and provide resources for them.”
For more information, visit www.babysteps.org/auburn.
