Wind Beneath My Wings

Arkansas Single Parent Scholarship Fund Helps Turn Dreams Into Reality

Words Dwain Hebda images courtesy Michelle Gilbert, Breezy Kuhl, and Jade Graves Photography

Meya Sanders At an age when most kids are getting their driver’s license, Meya Sanders became a mom. It was just one of the conditions of her early life that seemed to steer the Memphis native into a statistical column; another child of addicts destined to a life devoid of its true potential.

But where many people only viewed where she was, Meya always held in her mind where she could go. She attended community college and earned a phlebotomist degree which began a long career in health care. She felt called to care for others, be it in a clinic or on their deathbed in hospice, both of which have been stops on her professional journey.

Life hasn’t always been smooth and seemingly never easy – a marriage brought her to Fort Smith; a bad divorce put her back on her own with more children to care for – but the journey has been hers.

“The classes and what I’ve learned so far, it’s just joy that I did this, you know? It gives me that I-did-this-all-bymyself feeling, you know?” she says. “It gives me a sense of accomplishment. Coming out of a really bad divorce, it makes me feel so good that I was able to do this. I am happy in what I’m doing and how I’m doing it. It’s hard, don’t get me wrong; it’s so hard, but it’s rewarding.”

Meya is quick to give credit where credit is due. She mentions her sister who's nearly done with a master’s degree as one source of inspiration. Her parents, now more than twenty years clean and sober and pursuing careers as drug and alcohol counselors, are another. The Almighty gets a lot of credit, too, and without question, she says, the Arkansas Single Parent Scholarship Fund (ASPSF), which has helped fund her dream into becoming a reality.

“I actually heard about it through my financial advisor at Arkansas Tech University [Ozark campus],” she said. “I told her my story that I was a newly single parent at the time and I’m doing this on my own. I have no family here. My ex-husband and his family do not help me whatsoever. She mentioned the Arkansas Single Parent Scholarship Fund.

“They heard my story, filled out the application and for the last almost two years they have helped me every semester with making sure that I get these things done on time. These people are a blessing to me.”

The nonprofit ASPSF began thirty-one years ago as a grassroots organization in Northwest Arkansas. Its founders envisioned a way to help support single parents who were trying to make a change in their circumstances through higher education.

“There was a growing need due to gaps in services provided. This meant [single parents] were facing a lot of barriers,” says Michelle Gilbert, the group’s communications director. “Our scholarship dollars can be used for whatever is needed most to help them be able to continue in their education. If that’s childcare, if it’s gas, if it’s money to have internet at home so that they can do their online courses, whatever. It’s for whatever they need to help them be successful.

“The base scholarship is $1,200 a semester for a full-time student and if some of them were taking fewer hours than that, it would be proportional to the number of hours that they’re taking. They can receive that in spring, fall and summer.”

The program wasn’t just interested in handing out checks. From its inception, ASPSF took a holistic approach to the people it served, providing support services to help ensure the efforts took root.

“We provide what we call wraparound services,” Michelle says. “We’re giving the students different developmental and educational opportunities that will help them throughout their school career, help them better prepare for interviews and landing a job, help them be more successful once they secure that employment.

They heard my story, filled out the application and for the last almost two years they have helped me every semester with making sure that I get these things done on time. These people are a blessing to me.

Michelle Gilbert

“Today, we have a lot of budgeting classes and career preparedness. We even have some workshops that might not come to mind easily, but really help people overcome barriers, such as a car maintenance class. Lower-income students may not have the greatest functioning vehicle in the world, but it’s important to get themselves and their kids to school, so we teach them how to take care of it themselves and save some money doing that.”

The number of scholarships awarded to date is impressive by any measure. To date, ASPSF has awarded forty-six thousand scholarships over its history, totaling $30 million. In 2020 alone, more than sixteen hundred scholarships were awarded, totaling $1.5 million, an increase of forty-one percent over 2019. This doesn’t include distributing more than fifty laptops to qualifying students to assist in their schoolwork. And still, the group would like to do more.

“One of our big goals is increasing our reach and awareness, so that we’re able to serve a greater portion of our state,” Michelle says. “Thirty-five percent of single-parent families in Arkansas live below the poverty line and we would like to be serving as many of those individuals as we can.”

Breezy Kuhl knew she had reached a crossroads in life, standing in the checkout line at a discount store.

“I was living paycheck to paycheck. I was in Saver’s trying to find my kid a Halloween costume,” she said. “He picked out this seven-dollar Halloween costume and my card was denied. I scanned another one and it denied. That was the moment for me. I had to make a change.”

Breezy had attended college off and on since high school but dropped out before graduating in order to get married and start a family. The marriage fell apart, leaving her to fend for her family’s welfare.

“I had about three years left to get my degree,” she says. “I went through Southern New Hampshire University’s accelerated programs, so it probably took me a little less than two years to finish.”

She graduated with a degree in business administration with a concentration in human resources management and is today the director of HR for a consulting company that manages nursing homes. She’s also pursuing her master’s degree.

The ASPSF was so instrumental to her success, she volunteers in her spare time to help others who are in the same position she once was in.

“It’s a great, great program. The people are wonderful,” she said. “For me, it was so much more than just a scholarship. It was more than that money. It was the support that they gave you. As a single parent, going back to school, it’s never easy. I did have a good support system with my friends and my family, but I can’t imagine what it’s like for the people who don’t have that.

“Even though they don’t have programs for grad students, they still keep up with me as I’m working on my MBA. They still encourage me to keep going. They really do care about these students. They invest in them in more than that financial part, they invest in the emotional part as well.”

Breezy emulates this caring attitude, and when she speaks to people about the program, the ring of authenticity in her voice is undeniable. Encountering other single parents facing the same hurdles she once did, she’s direct and to the point.

“It’s never a good time to go back to school when you’re a single parent,” she says. “I believe that so much in our life we put stuff off because it’s not a good time. You have to get past that and just go do it.

“My advice is, you’re always going to have excuses, but you just have to make up your mind that this is what’s going to be better for me and commit to it and go for it.”

Learn more about Arkansas Single Parent Scholarship Fund at Aspsf.org.