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Candace Gets Back on Her Feet with Help of the Getting Ahead Program
  
"Poverty is a state of mind, not just a state of your finances," Candace says confidently. She grew up just outside of Cincinnati, and as a first grader walking home from school one day she saw several "dirty and sad looking" children standing on the balcony of their apartment building. When she got home, Candace told her mother, "Do something to help the poor children." She was not expecting to hear that her family was having the same financial struggles as those "dirty" children since she and her siblings were neither dirty nor sad. When you are poor you don't have enough. Candace never felt deprived because of what she didn't have; she felt privileged because of what she did have. Even though her mother had spoken the words, "We are poor too", the meaning would not fully resonate with Candace until well into her adulthood.
The one thing Candace knew as a small child was that she wanted to be a writer. And so she went to college with the right attitude and the intent of pursuing that dream. Candace was fortunate enough to land an entry-level job working for an advertising agency where she had the ability to write anything and everything from internal documents to being part of the copywriting team. At this point she was a self-sufficient career women who had helped herself rise out of poverty, but little did she know how rapidly things could change.
Having to deal with high blood pressure and diabetes was not Candace's only confrontation with medical expenses. She was diagnosed with a host of other illnesses including pre-breast cancer lumps. To complicate things, her daughter, who was a scholar athlete, had chronic medical issues and suffered from a head injury, all of which need consultations from ten medical specialists. Slowly this brilliant success story hit a wall and Candace could barely make ends meet.
After a struggling for a few years, Candace was introduced to the Bridges Out of Poverty's Getting Ahead program. One of the largest pieces of information that Candace learned was the hidden middle class social rule of networking (and it does not equate to using someone). The class, Candace says "created a context for living. It unified the missing pieces; it made my life make sense. Getting Ahead is getting out of my comfort zone." Recently Candace has been called to preach and is working at getting into seminary. She continues to write. She knows that through God's work and her gift of writing she has the opportunity to reach others in need.
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