This program gives Black single moms $1,000 a month for a year. The results are undeniable

Amaya Jones and her two children. Photograph: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today/Courtesy of Springboard to OpportunitiesView image in fullscreenAmaya Jones and her two children. Photograph: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today/Courtesy of Springboard to OpportunitiesMississippiThis program gives Black single moms $1,000 a month for a year. The results are undeniableThe Magnolia Mother’s Trust is the first to target low-income families led by Black mothers in Jackson, Mississippi

Three months after giving birth to her son, Amaya Jones moved into a new apartment complex. She knew no one else in the building, but it was a fresh start for her and her two children. One day, someone put up a flyer on her unit’s door, notifying her about a program called the Magnolia Mother’s Trust (MMT).

Launched in 2018, the MMT is the longest-running guaranteed income program in the country, and the first to target extremely low-income families headed by Black mothers in Jackson, Mississippi. With no strings attached, the program provides mothers with $1,000 a month for 12 months.

While she was pregnant, Jones experienced homelessness. She applied for the program, knowing that it could be life-changing. When she found out that she had been selected for that year’s cohort, Jones “burst out into tears”, she said. “I went from full-time to part-time to barely making ends meet. I was like: ‘Oh, my God. Lord, you hear my cry.’ It was rainbows after bad weather.”

When Jones’s son was younger, he was frequently sick, and the family was living paycheck to paycheck. Missing a day of work, even to care for an infant, meant that her check would be short, and Jones struggled to ensure she was covering the day-to- day expenses for her children.

View image in fullscreenAllonnah Hawkins, seven; Alonzo Hawkins, nine; and their mother, Cheryl Gray, in their apartment in Jackson on 6 August 2019. Gray received support from Springboard to Opportunities and was working on buying a house through Habitat for Humanity. Photograph: The Washington Post/Getty ImagesNow, she’s able to exceed it.

“It was a sigh of relief,” Jones says of the guaranteed income. “I was actually able to take my kids out of town, stuff I wouldn’t be able to do. It’s more time with my children. It’s still helping me today because I’m not struggling and I can prepare myself for the future. My kids are still taken care of.”

Being in a cohort with other single moms who receive assistance from MMT has also helped her build community. The MMT is “bigger than the money”, Jones said.

“We had meetings. We talked about mental health,” she said. “I found new people who lived in the apartments, because I knew no one. It’s like a very big sisterhood and familyhood to this day.

“When my baby was in the hospital, they would check on my baby: ‘Do you need anything?’ Even if I didn’t reply, they would text me again. Some people don’t like to talk about their problems. Some people don’t like to talk about things that they may be going through … But when they say this is an open space, everything stays in this room. We’ve talked about so many things. If you need a little free time, bring the kids to me. We build relationships and friendships. That’s what the trust is.”

The MMT is an initiative from Springboard to Opportunities, a non-profit organization that Aisha Nyandoro, from Mississippi, co-founded in 2013. Springboard works directly with families who live in federally supported affordable housing in Jackson. Nyandoro calls it a “radically resident-driven approach”.

But by 2017, Nyandoro became concerned that Springboard wasn’t moving the needle enough on poverty. Though the organization has after-school programs, workforce development, reading circles and other programing, she started wondering what else they needed to offer.