Letonia and her family live in the Taylor Park housing project. Her three children - Tiffany, 17, Thommya, 7, and Trinity, 5 - live with her as does her 12-year-old nephew, Xavier. Letonia works full time at the Methodist Mission near her apartment. She performs a variety of jobs, including supervising the after-school program at Taylor Park and tutoring the children who attend. Sometimes she counsels the children or goes to the school for their parents when there is a disciplinary problem.
The 34-year-old Mobile, Alabama, native recently completed a degree at Mobile Technical Institute, after attending night classes during the week. Her next ambition is to complete a degree at Spring Hill College. Her biggest challenge is being a single mother while trying to pay all the bills on her $6.85-an-hour wage. Letonia finds herself in a strange limbo: she makes too much money to qualify for food stamps but does not qualify for welfare. And her children’s fathers do not pay child support. Letonia keeps her children very active in extracurriculars, but activity fees add up. Letonia says she rarely has any money left over for herself, but she isn’t bothered by this. “I feel like I don’t care how I look as long as they look nice,” she says of her children.
Letonia’s goals are to move out of the project and send all of her children to college. Her oldest daughter, Tiffany, is a sophomore in high school and hopes to attend Auburn. “My big thing to them is education, education, education,” Letonia says. “I want them to be successful. They gonna graduate from high school and college. That’s my biggest wish. I want them to have something.”
