As a single mom, Cal Poly transfer student Tayla Easterla understood the challenging obstacles that come with being a young parent enrolled in college. Interested in helping other young moms, she is now part of the “IMPACT” Project: Invincible Mamas Pushing For Change Together.
The IMPACT Project, organized under the Justice and Joy National Collaborative, focuses on abolishing barriers to student-parent success within institutions and assisting young mothers through creating policy recommendations on local, state and federal levels.
“I found drive to just really connect and to help other women that were in the same situations I was in because there were many barriers,” she said. “There’s such a huge lack of resources in our nation.”
Easterla first joined the project in March of 2023 after a friend at the Justice and Joy National Collaborative mentioned an open position as a steering committee member for the IMPACT Project.
“I’ve been an advocate since I was a young girl,” she said. “I was raised in Sacramento, California, which is an extremely diverse city. It’s a metropolitan area. And one of the first advocacy things I remember doing was marching against sex trafficking in my own city.”
The steering committee for the IMPACT Project focuses on allocating funds. As lead for the steering committee, Easterla facilitates meetings and creates recommendations for what direction to take. Additional heads of the steering committee include the social media lead and the alliance lead.
“I’m in charge of all the members that are in the steering committee, so I make sure that they’re kind of just doing what they are supposed to be doing, getting their tasks done and making sure that we’re meeting our deliverables,” she said.
IMPACT social media lead Kristen Powell focuses on running their Instagram account, their Facebook group for national alliance members and expanding their overall community outreach.
“We were able to launch our Instagram account in January of this year,” Powell said.
With the goal of gaining 1,000 followers by the end of 2023, as of January 2024, @invinciblemamas has 1,013 followers on Instagram.
Alliance lead Tyler Azure focuses on growing the IMPACT national advocacy alliance.
“Women that were younger mothers can just come together when it comes to policy work, being able to change things,” Azure said.
According to Azure, creating a community for single mothers can help abolish their feelings of isolation.
Together, Easterla, Powell and Azure dedicate their time to strengthening the structure of the IMPACT Project.
“Each of us has a role within the steering committee to kind of take the lead and take the charge on those three areas of work…so now that we have that structure, we’ve been getting a lot more done,” Powell said.
Recently, the IMPACT Project leaders had the opportunity to have its first congressional briefing in Washington D.C. on Capitol Hill. Together, they were able to communicate to Congress the common challenges young mothers face today and policy recommendations to help solve them.
“I went in front of Congress and I just created policy recommendations based off of my own lived experience,” Easterla said. “With the more voices we collect, the more data we have to create recommendations.”
The IMPACT Project’s current goal is to spread awareness that many young mothers enrolled in full time school need inclusivity in order to thrive, according to Easterla.
