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Design Insights: Single Moms Success Design Challenge
Design Insights: An Education Design Lab publication series.
Single moms have incredible strengths as problem solvers, multitaskers, relationship builders, resilient go-getters, and individuals whose skills so often go unrecognized in education and the workforce. Understanding their experiences and bringing them directly into decision-making processes will lay the groundwork for change that supports them and so many other learners in creating the futures they want for themselves and their families.
In 2019 the Lab, with support from ECMC Foundation, led a cohort of four community colleges through a human-centered design process to answer the question: How might community colleges dramatically improve completion rates for single mothers by intentionally addressing the unique needs of this population?
In this Single Moms Success Design Insights Brief, the Lab shares six design insights, highlights key learnings, and paints a picture of the four pilot programs developed through this project. Each college has $50,000 in start-up funding as part of this grant to support pilot implementation.
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The Lab is leading a cohort of 4 community colleges in a multi-year initiative that aims to dramatically improve community college completion rates for single mothers.
Over the next several years, the Lab will support the teams as they sustain and scale their pilots. The cohort aims to achieve a 30 percent increase in attainment of degrees and high-quality credentials by single mother learners at each school, impacting at least 6,000 single moms by summer 2024.
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Reimagining Single Moms Success: A Window into the Design Challenge
The Single Moms Success Design Challenge aims to help community colleges address the obstacles faced by single mother learners in the pursuit of degree and credential attainment by pursuing the question: How might community colleges dramatically improve completion rates for single mothers by intentionally addressing the unique needs of this population? See how the Lab engaged four leading community colleges in a design experience to reimagine single moms success at our National Convening in June 2019.
Follow our Single Moms Success work on Twitter: @eddesignlab #SingleMomsSuccess