 Hello and welcome to Young Mothers Unite. I'm Cherri the Founder of Young Mothers. I bought my first Macintosh computer, and created my very first web site in 1995. My first attempts were fruitless, aggravating, mind numbing, and completely drove me nuts! I called on a good friend for help. Ashton Leigh came to the rescue! At the time Ashton was a Community Leader for Geocities, and with her extensive knowledge of web graphics, web page building, and html, she was a HUGE help in getting my first website online.
I wanted my site to have a cause, a purpose, something I felt strongly about. I wanted it to mean something to someone other than myself. The two most predominant happenings in my life have been the fact that I had my son at the age of 17 (Teen Pregnancy), and the other is that I am a survivor of Domestic Violence. I wanted to dedicate my site to these two very important causes, and help where ever, who ever, and how ever I could. My 2 main goals were to offer a private and protected internet community for teen/young mothers, that would offer support, encouragement, and friendship in a safe environment. The other goal was to get our stories out there to try and deter other young girls from getting pregnant at such a young age. In the beginning, my personal site contained writings about my experiences with abusive relationships, Domestic Violence facts, my story as a Young Mother, dedications to POW MIA's, stuff about family, my cats, and assorted things that I like. I eventually split the site into two. One site was solely dedicated to Young Mothers, and the other was about me and Domestic Violence.
After the site was a few years old I had lost contact with most members, I hadn't dedicated myself to it like I wanted to, so I decided to try and bring it back to life, give it my all! I began by designing new graphics, and asked for help from a long time YM member, Rachelle. She was very knowledgeable with html, forms, and frames. We even moved YM to Prohosting, so that we could have a banner free site. She helped me update the questionnaire, so that all I had to do was enter the html into the page and it was all set up in frames. The old way was to copy paste each and every answer, which was extremely time consuming and difficult to keep up with. The new html questionnaire freed me up to create other things for YM like a monthly news letter. I brought the list back by signing up with Onelist, and it did very well. I made sure members knew I was here to stay by posting to the list on a regular basis. I knew I had to be active to expect others to be. I cleaned up the ring, got rid of all the dead beats (people that no longer had the code on heir site) and created an invitation. I sat for hours upon hours surfing the net, looking for possible members to invite, and sending out invitations to them. YM began to grow!
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Around this time, Rachelle, and I began to have difficulties agreeing on how to do things, and I became very protective of YM, and decided to go back to doing it alone. My decision regrettably caused a mess between us. Prohosting was having problems, and I had gotten quite irritated with it, so I moved YM back to it's original home, Geocities.
Once again, YM had a MAJOR overhaul! I created another new logo, and a whole new themed set of graphics to give a more cohesive feel, giving it the much needed consistency it never had before.
Many Young Mothers didn't have web space or know how to create a web page, so YM offered one page to put their ring code on so they could be a member of the webring, as well as the community. The only requirement was that they fill out the questionnaire, and write a few paragraphs about their pregnancy, their labor experience, or their general experience as a YM. Once YM was back home with Geocities, it grew and grew to hold over 300 members at one point in time! In June of 2000 I submitted a letter to Geocities telling them how their free web space has provided a home for the Young Mothers site. My letter was chosen to be in the June's Geocities World Report! As a result, the site received thousands of visits from all over the world! Many of the visitors were impressed and left wonderful compliments in the guest book. Unfortunately that guest book has been lost due to lack of maintenance. This was the same year I decided to go back to college and get my Bachelors Degree in Graphic Design. Everything became so overwhelming, being a single Mom, school, work, YM's site maintenance, and just regular stuff like house cleaning and laundry. I had to budget my time just to stay sane. Unfortunately YM got bumped down the list of priorities. As I spent less and less time, so did the members, and eventually we all grew apart. Friends I used to chat with every day, I'm lucky if we connect up every few months or so now. Although YM has evolved and lost the activity it once had, I know deep down in my heart that it's a good thing. If every visitor, or girl that was a member here, got the support she needed to move on and do bigger and better things with her life, then it was all worth it. The high level of activity YM once had was wonderful, fun, and we all made friends for life, however while we were busy online... sometimes life passed us by, or we neglected other things that should have had higher priority. I wish all of the old members good luck and happiness in their lives and the willpower to always fight for their dreams to succeed.
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After an incredibly rough three years, I now struggle to rebuild my life since my son's death in 2003. I have a whole different outlook on life now, and wish to share it to help others in any way I can. This has always been my way of doing that, so here I am. Last week I decided to redo all of my neglected websites, starting with Young Mothers. I've forgotten the password, answer to the secret question, bla bla bla, all the stuff that Yahoo requires you to provide in order to get into your account. After sending several requests and not getting anywhere, I decided to just redo the whole thing. In my beginning stages of research I found this, Beth's Big Project, URL: http://72.14.209.104searchq=cachestTGK2cwqdwJdocuments.ioes.org1729479.pdf +index+of+young_mothers&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=6&lr=lang_en&client=firefox-a Her project is to help Pregnant and Parenting Students in Illinois. On page 6, Beth cites the Young Mothers website for a list of statistics I had compiled many years ago. It warms my heart a great deal to think that I contributed, if even in the smallest way, and makes me feel even stronger about rebuilding YMU. The rebuilding process will be a slow one due to my lack of proper software, having to write the html code, and incorporate the old with the new. Like anything in life... it's a process. Many things have changed since I was here web-creating last. Yahoo no longer allows links, Geeze! Once I had the majority of the site up, created the new banner the site was shut down. I was devastated, as I hadn't saved any of my html to my hard drive (lesson learned the hard way there!) I didn't realize the TOS guidelines had changed so drastically, and inadvertently I broke the TOS by having links to Amazon and Barnes & Noble in the bookshelf page. I begged and pleaded, spent hours on the phone with Yahoo in California, Verizon my ISP, and got nowhere. Then a few days later I got an email stating that I had my files restored and was given 48 hours to remove the offending files, which I did quickly, as well as back up my files. So Young Mothers Unite LIVES! Thank you Yahoo!/Geocities. I'm not sure of a complete vision for YMU at this point, however my main goal is to restore and update it. To keep the level of maintenance down, as well as offering young mothers that come here TRUE encouragement to live life to the fullest (OFF of the computer), I will not be implementing the web-ring, membership, newsletter, or any request for activity from it's visitors. I will however revamp the questionnaire at some point, and accept any fitting articles, poems, artwork, or writings on the issues that concern young mothers. Eventually I want to upgrade the site, implement the links, possibly accept donations for organizations that help young mothers, have stickers, T-shirts, inspirational posters, and who knows what else. The possibilities could be endless. So come check back in often and see what's new! :0) Sincerely, Cherri ~ Founder of Young Mothers Unite |
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Young mothers are very proud and hold their heads high because they decided to keep their child and raise it the best they could. Part of the membership process was completing the questionnaire. This is a list of questions that deal with the particulars of their becoming pregnant, dealing with it, family, friends, support structure, financial support, education level, wishes, and goals, etc... Each member was asked to complete it, however were not required to allow it's posting on the site. Many members completed the questionnaire and allow me to post it on the site, others felt it was too personal and declined. The completed questionnaires from old members can be found by clicking the 
YM never looked SO good! and I was quite proud of it and all the hard work I had put into it. YM has come a long way since 1995, and has helped many people. Many helped it grow by contributing to it, therefore I can not alone take all the credit. I simply created a base for the members to make it what it had become. A wonderfully supportive, and caring community of kind hearted young mothers from all over the United States, as well as a few overseas.
