Parker MacIntyre Proudly Sponsors Helping Mamas’ Annual Mission — November 2018

Parker MacIntyre was pleased to support today’s program, Thrive: Opening Doors, a lunch and networking event held in Atlanta today. At the Thrive event a panel of professional women, entrepreneurs and mothers connected to share their stories and ideas to support Helping Mamas‘ mission to provide low-income women and children essential supplies and services. The stated goal of the Thrive event was to inspire mothers to know they are not alone in their efforts to reach self-sufficiency

In promoting the event, Helping Mamas stated that it “wants all women not only survive and uplift each other in times of crisis, but thrive. We want also to celebrate individuality and successes. This is why we created THRIVE, a women’s networking event and luncheon to benefit Helping Mamas.”

Panelists and speakers include former Twitter Executive, Erica Hogue, Heather Catlin, Host of Hot Topics, Julie Saxon and Alia Lamborghini, from Oath and last year’s featured speaker, Kat Cole, COO of Focus Brands.

Helping Mamas, located in Snellville, Georgia, was created in 2014 with a simple mission to provide diapers to mothers in need and social workers. Helping Mamas also supports 100 additional agencies, as there are hundreds of organizations in Atlanta alone that serve women and children, and they all request baby supplies for their clients. These nonprofits don’t have the time to secure these in-kind donations, and don’t have the storage for these donations. Before Helping Mamas there was no coordinated effort to collect and distribute essential baby items not covered by food stamps and WIC.

The company also has a Knoxville, Tennessee location that provides services to struggling mothers in Tennessee. Primary sources of donations for both locations include drives, partnering with other agencies with similar goals, and volunteering.

Helping Mamas currently estimates there are over 300,000 children living in poverty in metropolitan Atlanta and that three out of every five mothers struggle with diaper need. Helping Mamas helped over 15,000 mothers and children in 2017 and continues to grow and serve increasing numbers of mothers and children each year. Thirty-two percent of all households in Georgia are single parent households. In general, Atlanta has one of the largest populations of children living in poverty in the country. Because of these numbers, we are trying to break down the stigma of low-income women. There’s the welfare myth that flies around which is completely ridiculous. Women are not staying at home to get pregnant and have babies. For a single mom with two kids, their average monthly TANF payment is $280 dollars; nobody is getting rich on that.

Founder of Helping Mamas Jamie Lackie says, “If you look at moms and women in general, 61% of all mothers in the workforce have infants – that’s for women from low to high income which shows our female workforce is driven by moms and moms with infants.” She adds that nationally, “one in three moms have to choose between diapers and food. That’s 30% of all moms; it’s unbelievable.

Parker MacIntyre was pleased to be a supporting sponsor during 2018 and to co-sponsor this important event. Anyone interested in supporting the mission of Helping Mamas can find information regarding donations at this link: https://helpingmamas.org/donate.