Crossway Community
Embracing—and educating—single mothers and their kids
By Amy Reinink
Peek into the Crossway Community Montessori Program around lunchtime and you’ll see industrious toddlers setting tables, pouring glasses of water and harvesting vegetables from the garden.
Many are the progeny of movers and shakers in the community. Just as many, though, are the children of low-income, single mothers studying at the adjoining Family Leadership Academy, where they acquire workplace, parenting and financial literacy skills while living on the Kensington “campus,” a converted elementary school owned by Montgomery County.
The only difference between the two groups: The wealthier parents pay, while the low-income mothers don’t.
Founded more than 20 years ago, Crossway came out of a community initiative to improve the lives of at-risk families in the area. It’s “a result of truly listening to families when we asked them what they needed to be economically secure and safe,” says Chief Executive Officer Kathleen Guinan.
Crossway provides clothing, food and supplies for the families, who live in apartments there for three to four years before mothers “graduate” to other housing and steady employment.
Fourteen graduated last year. Mothers pay rent on a sliding scale and help around the center, gaining “the tools to become economically self-sufficient through experiential education,” Guinan says.
Crossway’s emphasis, in fact, is on education: Of the 37 women currently enrolled in the program, more than half take college classes.
Serena Crawford, 39, came to Crossway in 2005 after escaping a difficult relationship in Michigan. She says the organization taught her the importance of cooking nutritious meals and sitting down for dinner with her two daughters, now 8 and 13. It also helped her get through college—she earned her associate’s degree in hospitality from Montgomery College in 2008, and her bachelor’s degree in human resources management from the University of Maryland this year. She’s now interning in Crossway’s human resources department.
“This was a place where I was able to calm down and feel safe while I reconfigured my life,” Crawford says.
Crossway recently won approval to expand its Montessori program by adding first through third grades, making it the county’s first charter school. Guinan says 90 percent of the kids who have completed the preschool program have stayed at or above grade level in Montgomery County Public Schools.
“This is where you see a return on the investment,” she says. “We can’t change what’s happened in someone’s past, but we can change the future.”
Guinan, who is in her 50s, has spent her life as a “social entrepreneur,” founding a host of nonprofits in Washington, D.C., including a soup kitchen in the 1970s at which Mother Teresa served the first meal.
Crossway’s $2 million annual budget is funded by sliding-scale tuitions, rent and training fees, in addition to private donations and grants. It has a community center where local groups hold events, hosts twice-weekly dinners for its families, offers before- and after-school programs and a summer camp, and hopes eventually to offer housing and services for the elderly.
“It’s a community of friends based on true reciprocity, where everything is fully integrated,” Guinan says. “This is what true community is all about.”
