When Anatolia became pregnant at 19, she wasn’t sure where to turn. She knew she needed help to prepare for her new role as a mom and found NVFS’ Healthy Families program.

“The Healthy Families program has helped me as a mother by providing support and a lot of educational resources that I wasn’t aware of and the stages that my daughter should be reaching,” Anatolia states. “But me as a mother, I felt I was genuinely helped as a human being when I most needed it.”

Anatolia’s confidence in herself and her parenting skills was compounded by her tenuous relationship with her daughter’s father, who she didn’t know had been using drugs and using rent money to purchase them. Anatolia’s family support worker helped her gain custody of her daughter and find new opportunities for her to move forward.

“If it wasn’t for the support system I had through the organization, I feel I would have stayed in the unhealthy relationship I was in,” she shares. “I don’t know if me and my daughter would be as well as we are now. I feel like I wouldn’t be as strong as I am now.”

One such opportunity was NVFS’ Training Futures program, which teaches the job skills needed to help individuals advance into career-track jobs.

“What we helped Anatolia with is equipping her with technical skills, equipping her with soft skills, and we helped her to build her self-confidence,” says Sunny Gurung, NVFS workforce development trainer. “Most importantly, what we’ve done for Anatolia is we’ve helped her pave her pathway toward a brighter future.”

Since graduating from Training Futures, Anatolia continues to look for new opportunities to expand her skill set, and enjoys spending time with her daughter as they learn and thrive together.