Parents explore resources

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A young girl wearing a pink tutu and fuchsia boots pranced about a cheery room while a toddler girl in a tiny jean jacket gazed up at her with a big smile.

At last week’s open house in the Resource Center for Students with Children on the fourth floor of the Smith Memorial Student Union, parents stepped back a little to gain some breathing room.

The purpose of Friday’s event was to welcome student parents with children to this year’s new and still evolving resource center. Last week, the center launched its website, pdx.edu/students-with-children, complete with information on the center’s resources that include how to find child care and financial assistance.

“One of our goals this year is to get the word out and be more visible,” said Nneka Hall, who works at the center.

To increase the center’s visibility, several new programs are being launched, such as support groups for parents and the Five-Star Families program, Hall said.

This program allows parents who complete five activities (for example, meeting with an academic advisor, borrowing books from the lending library, attending a cultural event on campus) to attend the term’s Kids’ Night Out program for free.

All of these programs are an attempt to let students with children know that the resource center can help, Hall said.

At the center for the first time was engineering doctoral student Nametsegang Boemo-Mokhawa with his wife and their 17-month-old daughter Lesedi.

Boemo-Mokhawa saw the announcement for the open house on the resource center’s Facebook page and said that he immediately recognized the importance of bringing his child to the event.

“It’s good for kids to interact,” he said. “Particularly ours, because she hasn’t started school yet.”

The bright colors, deep-cushioned couches and assortment of cookies inside the common area room seemed guaranteed to please a child’s eye.

Yoko Sakurauchi’s twin sons Tyler and Kenji seemed to adapt to the bustling room quickly, working to collect toy train cars and joyfully grapple with them on a footstool so that the magnetized ends of the train cars connected.

Sakurauchi, who is pursuing her doctoral degree in education after getting her master’s from Portland State, is grateful to have access to the center.

“The child care arrangement is a great challenge,” she said. “Money is always an issue.” She also described the difficulty of finding child care availability for both of her sons.

Despite the stresses of making ends meet, Sakurauchi said that she appreciates the rhythm of her academic and home life.

“I like the balance of being a mother and a teacher,” she said. “It’s hard, but I enjoy it.”

Lisa Wittorff, coordinator for the resource center, busily welcomed more and more student parents as they made their way in.

“Starting the support groups [for student parents] will be our biggest thing this term,” she said.