She's a helping hand for single moms in Southwest Florida

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"Mommy, get out of bed.”

It’s been 16 years since Kristen Peterson, founder and president of A Mom’s Helping Hand of SWFL, heard her 7-year-old daughter say those words. She still remembers that day, her daughter standing by her bed and asking her, “Don’t you even care if I had a good day? I still need a mom.”

“It was a slap in my face,” Kristen says. “No 7-year-old should have to come to their mother and feel that their mother doesn’t love them. No child should feel that way, ever.”

Kristen had relocated to her mother’s Cape Coral home from Connecticut with her four children, ages 1 month to 7 years old, after going through a divorce.

“I was so depressed when I got here,” she explains. “It was extremely difficult, trying to get over the divorce and dealing with all of these emotional issues.”

One of the biggest difficulties Kristen faced was finding resources and support for single mothers.

“There are a lot less services here than there are in New England,” she says. “It was a big shock for me. My ex was in the Navy, so the lack of services here was phenomenal.”

A few months after moving to Cape Coral, and after her tough-love talk from her daughter, Kristen got a job and started saving money so she could afford to move into her own home. It seemed like things were falling into place; she was working as a K-2 teacher at a school in Fort Myers and the kids were thriving.

“Although I had things together, I was still struggling to figure out how I was going to do things on my own,” she says. “Just taking care of my kids and working was all I could muster up the energy for each day.”

Finding support

Several years later, Kristen connected with a group of local single moms, and she felt like a weight was lifted off her shoulders.

“While you do have family and friends who say they understand what you are going through, they can’t really understand if they haven’t been through it,” she says.

The support she received though the group, and the opportunities she found to support others, started Kristen on the path to founding A Mom’s Helping Hand of SWFL. She started researching 501(c)(3) organizations in November 2014, filed in January and was approved in February 2015.

“In March or April, I took a class through Goodwill on running your own business,” she recalls. “I figured that would help me run my own nonprofit.”

She started with four board members, including herself.

“I jumped in feet-first and figured if it’s meant to be, God is going to make it happen,” Kristen says.

The first project they launched was a series of support group meetings.

“We geared a lot of our programs towards what I struggled with as a single mom trying to raise kids here,” she says. “Support is and always will be a key factor of the organization. When you go home and you have a husband or wife at home, you have that other person to tag team with. That is where our support groups come in. Oftentimes the moms come in to this group and find that they now have someone to call.”

Another program they launched was directly tied to something Kristen struggled with early on as a single mom: birthday parties.

“I couldn’t afford to take my kids to Greenwell’s or anything like that,” she explains. “Even having a party at home, I didn’t have the basics. I wanted to make sure every child could have a party whether parents could afford it or not.”

The next program was directed toward helping single mothers provide school supplies for their children.

“One thing I wasn’t used to when I moved here was having to supply all of the school supplies,” she says. “Trying to put four kids in school, I was easily spending a good $200 just in supplies.”

A Mom’s Helping Hand covers 100% of the school supply lists for moms in the program, unless it is a specialty item.

Over the years, more programs followed. Once a month, A Mom’s Helping Hand opens the office to moms in the program so they can pick up toiletries and stretch their grocery budgets or, for those who are eligible for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as SNAP, save the money they would have spent on toiletries and put it toward other necessities. About three years ago, the nonprofit partnered with a Cape Coral business to provide a complete Thanksgiving dinner for each of the families.

“This year she asked how many we had, and I quietly whispered 30,” Kristen says. She was unsure if that number would be too high for the business to cover. Their response? “She said, ‘Awesome, we’re up for it!’ We have some really amazing and generous people here in our community.”

That includes the parent-teacher organization at Oasis Elementary who have stepped up to help as the program has grown.

Launching so many programs their first year may have been a bit ambitious, but Kristen has no regrets. And with so many programs, and families to help, funding was needed, especially when it came to providing school supplies. The board’s idea that first year was such a hit, it continues to be their main fundraiser each year: flocking.

“We tried to stop flocking, but people keep calling,” she says.

Flocking involves someone paying A Mom’s Helping Hand to place a large number of flamingos in someone’s yard to celebrate a birthday or anniversary or as a practical joke.

“We had someone call us because their brother was going for open heart surgery and they wanted to give him a laugh,” Kristen says. “Now it’s kind of evolved.”

Flocking still funds the school supply program, which helped 150 families this year and 400 the previous year, and the funds now stretch to cover opening the office for group meetings. Other fundraisers include yard cards, Mother’s Day flowers and car washes.

The generosity and support of the community has allowed A Mom’s Helping Hand to stretch beyond the 31 families in their program, especially during the holidays.

SWFL Santas

The holidays can be a stressful time for families, and the SWFL Santas is another program that started from an area where Kristen struggled as a single mother.

“We live in a very giving community, especially at Christmas time,” she says. “Last year we helped 50 families in addition to the 25 families within our program.”

The program pairs a family in need during the holidays with a business organization or family or community member who adopts them for the holidays. The family provides a wish list.

“We tell everyone it’s just suggestions,” Kristen says,noting that they try to avoid filling the list with expensive items. “If we find that a child needs a little bit more, we will purchase that ourselves.”

A Mom’s Helping Hand also helps supplement the Santas, meaning that, if a donor is only able to provide one gift for a child, the organization will get a few more presents for the child. And Kristen notes that a unique part of the program is that teens are not left out.

“We know that teenagers need to have something under the tree,” she says. “So we do not do an age cut-off at elementary school or middle school.”

The program starts months before the holidays, and A Mom’s Helping Hand works to ensure that families within their program are adopted first prior to opening the program to other families in need.

“We guarantee our families that if we don’t get them adopted, we will make sure they have Christmas,” she explains. “We’ve never had someone go without Christmas.”

Moving Forward

A Mom’s Helping Hand started with five families in2015 and continues to grow each year. To participate, asingle mother must be living on her own in a home, andKristen notes they do home visits to ensure that there isnot a significant other sharing the residence. Childrenwho are part of the program must be 18 years of age oryounger, unless there are special circumstances. Mothersmust attend at least two meetings or training classes eachquarter, something that ties back to why Kristen startedthe program — support.

“It’s the biggest part of our program,” she notes. “Andit’s difficult to give support to people you don’t know.”