When Jailah became pregnant with her daughter Rheigan – unemployed, alone, and 3,000 miles away from her family – she knew she needed help.

Jailah and Rheigan began working with Allies’ Lead Home Educator Virginia when Rheigan was just four-months-old. As a new mom without a sturdy network of support, Jailah admits that she “didn’t even know where to start.”

Virginia and Jailah worked together to fortify Jailah’s strengths and build the skills and confidence required to face her challenges. Together, they navigated the complexities of health insurance and affordable housing. They built Jailah’s resume and sharpened her interviewing skills to land a job with regular hours and steady pay at the Department of Motor Vehicles. They problem-solved together when a utility bill was late or when Rheigan needed a new car seat. For Jailah, Virginia’s supports were a warm embrace, with no challenge insurmountable and no frustration too trivial for a venting session. As Jailah described Virginia: “she was relentlessly positive.”

What struck Virginia most about Jailah and Rheigan during their nearly three years together was their appetite for learning, diving headfirst into every activity that Virginia suggested.  To develop Rheigan’s fine motor skills, they painted, mixed up “clean mud” to make mud pies, built block homes, and shook maracas. To hone STEM capabilities, they measured ingredients for homemade playdough and created ramps to experiment with gravity. They read stories, sang songs, and learned to use words to communicate emotion. There was nothing too messy, too noisy, or too onerous for Jailah when it came to Rheigan’s development.

“We were her guinea pigs,” Jailah said. “I didn’t care if it was going to be extra work or more clean up, I wanted Rheigan to have every experience available to her.”

Virginia recalled an instance of finger-painting gone rogue, when Rheigan decided that everything, including the refrigerator, could be a canvas. Virginia caught the petite Picasso in the act and cringed at the thought of telling Jailah that her previously white refrigerator was covered in black paint, but was relieved when Jailah laughed and chalked it up to the process of parenting a toddler.