{"id":49084,"date":"2024-08-24T03:52:29","date_gmt":"2024-08-24T07:52:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=49084"},"modified":"2024-08-24T03:52:36","modified_gmt":"2024-08-24T07:52:36","slug":"bartow-my-girl-house-reopens-as-hope-house-for-young-single-moms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2024\/08\/24\/bartow-my-girl-house-reopens-as-hope-house-for-young-single-moms\/","title":{"rendered":"Bartow ‘My Girl’ house reopens as Hope House for young single moms"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

An iconic home in Bartow where the coming-of-age 90’s movie, \u201cMy Girl\u201d was filmed, has a new name and mission.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Hope House held a grand opening on Friday. The newly renovated six-bedroom home has been transformed into a refuge for first-time mothers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hope House is a 12-month maternity residential program for single expectant mothers in need between the ages of 18-26. Six mothers will be moving into the home during their first trimester. The nonprofit will cover all their living expenses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAll of our moms will receive weekly one-on-one therapy by a mental health counselor. We\u2019ll go heavy on financial literacy. We’re going to start with the foundations of understanding money and finance and build up budgeting skills,\u201d said Tara Johnson, executive director of Hope House.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Resident and program director, Debbie Kelly will be living on-site. At one time she too was a single mom and knows how valuable a support system is.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cYou get used to not much sleep, being able to juggle many things but I know they can do it. We are positive that we are going to equip them and encourage them, and they will be strong moms,\u201d said Kelly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The women will be required to have a part-time job to have money saved for when they\u2019ve completed the program. It\u2019s the only maternity home in Polk County and there is already a waitlist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA lot the pregnancy clinics that are working with us are eagerly waiting for us to open. Right now, when they have moms that want other options, that don’t want to abort but they are scared and don’t know what they are going to do, they have to send them to Sarasota,\u201d Kelly said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first batch of moms will be moving in in a few weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Johnson said community donations have funded the purchase and renovations of the 7,508-square-foot home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you would like to help equip and empower first-time, expectant moms, you can donate here <\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An iconic home in Bartow where the coming-of-age 90’s movie, \u201cMy Girl\u201d was filmed, has a new name and mission. Hope House held a grand opening on Friday. The newly… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49085,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"14","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[14],"tags":[9563],"class_list":["post-49084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-bartow-my-girl-house-reopens-as-hope-house-for-young-single-moms"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49084"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49084\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49087,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49084\/revisions\/49087"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}