news-record.com

GREENSBORO — Check out the corkboard in the small office of Sebrina Cooke-Davis and you’ll see a kaleidoscope of thumb-tacked photos of young girls.

One is wearing a high school graduation gown. Others are laughing, smiling, mugging for the camera. Each is cradling a child.

Cooke-Davis calls them “my girls;’’ they call her “Miss Sebrina.”

They’re girls like Dalila Fryar, LaKeisha McNeil Davis and Lauren Swartz . They’re all teen moms, babies having babies, and they’ve all had to grow up quick.

Cooke-Davis has been there to help. She’s taught them parent-education classes, gone with them to the hospital and answered frantic calls on her cell phone, sometimes as late as midnight.

But the girls on her corkboard all know where they want to go.

Dalila, a rising senior at N.C. A&T, wants to be a pharmacist. LaKeisha, a rising junior at Winston-Salem State, wants to be a speech therapist. Lauren, a rising sophomore at UNCG, wants to be a teacher.

Scholarships from Cooke-Davis’ employer have helped. That’s the Family Life Council. They snagged anywhere from $250 to $500 a semester to buy books, cover tuition and put gas in their cars.

And much more. Just ask Lauren, a Ragsdale High grad, class of 2008 .

“It helped me achieve my goal,’’ she says. “It helped make college a possibility.’’

Today, though, for the first time in two decades, that scholarship fund is no more. The fund relies on private donations, and as with every other nonprofit , donations are down because of the economy.

The Family Life Council will honor past scholarship winners currently in college. Meanwhile, staff members and volunteers will write letters and approach new donors to keep the fund afloat.

But as for potential scholarship recipients — which include a high school valedictorian this year — they won’t get a dime.

“Miss Sebrina, when are you going to bring the packets?’’ they’ve asked.

“You know, we’re having a rough time right now, and we can’t offer anything to new applicants,’’ she’s told them. “I’m really sorry about that.’’

In the past six years, Cooke-Davis has helped more than 900 young girls deal with what some see as society’s scarlet letter: teen pregnancy.

She’s taught them about nutrition, child development, health and safety, and discipline. She’s also learned how to tiptoe the fine line between the county’s marching orders to teach abstinence and the importance of safe sex.

It’s called Good Beginnings for Teen Parents, a program the Family Life Council started in the mid-1970s and became the first of its kind in the state. And every year since 1989, thanks to initial seed money from the Women’s Professional Forum, the council has awarded anywhere from 1 to 11 college scholarships a year.

“It’s not, 'Let’s give you money,’ ’’ says Cooke-Davis, the agency’s parent educator for the past six years. “It’s a way to honor these girls, to give them a source of motivation so they can say, 'I applied, and I got this.’ ’’

Like Lauren. She was a Girl Scout, a junior varsity cheerleader at Ragsdale High. She thought she had the flu. She was two months pregnant. Some of her relatives talked to her about getting an abortion. She was only 15.

Like LaKeisha. She played basketball and threw the shot put at Dudley High. But she was always tired, so tired her mother said, “You’re sleeping a lot; you must be pregnant.’’ She was. Six months pregnant. She had just turned 18.

Like Dalila. She was dealing with the loss of her mother to carbon monoxide poisoning when she found out she was four months pregnant. She didn’t tell anyone, even her older brother.

He drove her to the hospital because he thought she simply had severe stomach pains. There, after she delivered, the doctors gave him the news. He asked, “My sister is pregnant?’’ Dalila was only 16.

“When he found out, he told me, 'Dalila, I don’t want you going down that road having kids with all these different men,’ ’’ Dalila says. “And I was tired of people telling me I wasn’t going to be anything, that I’d be on welfare, that I wouldn’t finish school, that 'Oh my God, she had a baby. She’s a ho.’

“But it’s not what people tell you. It’s what you think about yourself.’’

They beat the odds.

Statistics will tell you fewer teen moms graduate from high school, even fewer finish college.

And on a file cabinet in Cooke-Davis’ office is a bumper sticker. It reads: Every 28 minutes an N.C. teen becomes pregnant.

Our state has the ninth highest number of teen pregnancies in the country.

In today’s economy, teen moms can’t survive with just a high school education. That is, if they get that far. And more often than not, they end up costing us money — going on government assistance or worse, going to jail.

So, that scholarship money is crucial. It encourages teen moms to keep going, to get that college education and find a way to beat the odds and survive.

That’s what Miss Sebrina believes. Because every time she looks at her corkboard, she knows more pictures are coming.

It’s just a matter of time.

Contact Jeri Rowe at 373-7374 or jeri.rowe@news-record.com