Last Monday, I ventured down to Winton Terrace to interview LaMonica Sherman, the Program Manager of St. Vincent DePaul’s satellite office in Winton Terrace. A low-income housing community that has a reputation for being dangerous is who she and her office serves each day. Yet the several times I’ve visited, I’ve felt nothing but welcome from everyone. I initially met LaMonica with her friends from Sister Circle, a women’s support group that she facilities. Their group performed a show of a mixture of song and story-telling. I loved how empowering the group is, so I just had to speak with them and LaMonica. LaMonica is someone who has been right where her clients have been. She herself is a single mother who has experienced poverty. On Monday, we discussed poverty and the mindset that people in poverty are in, amongst other things.
Name: LaMonica Sherman
Age: 44
Location: Cincinnati, Ohio
Where are you in life right now? I know you work as the Program Manager for the St. Vincent DePaul Winton Hills satellite office. What does life look like right now for LaMonica?
I am going through the Cincinnati Chamber’s We Lead program this year. I graduate from that June next year. Part of the program is to really help you get to whatever your next is. So what life look like for LaMonica right now is things that I always desired to do that I was gifted to do, to be able to explore those things. Like just before this month ends, I have four songs that I have written patented. So I’m looking to put that on a CD. Also I’ve been with St. Vincent DePaul for 16 years, so I’m really trying to … its been a lot of transitional changes here and I’m trying to really get clarity of what my next is.
Wow, sixteen years. How did you get connected with St. Vincent DePaul sixteen years ago?
Well sixteen years ago, my kids was very young. I have a 20-year-old and a 24-year-old. So my daughter was four and my son was eight, and I was still receiving assistance from Hamilton County. At that time I was working for Winton Hills Neighborhood House. I was the secretary at their East End site. I did holiday programs. I did the emergency food pantry and secretarial work. So I was only making seven dollars and 50 cent an hour, and I was looking for a way to make more money and get off of Hamilton County assistance. So I saw this job opening and I applied for it, and I was chosen for it. So since I’ve been here, I’ve been promoted twice. I started off as the supervisor downtown and then I started out here about nine years ago as the program manager. This is their first satellite office. So when I started at St. Vincent DePaul, of course my supervisor put me over all the holiday programs. When I first started here, the Adopt a Family program, it was not even 100 families getting adopted. I did that for 12 years and the last year I did that, it was over 500 families that I was able to get adopted. Plus out of that program came the Shop with the Bengals program.
Oh yeah, Shop with the Bengals! I saw that actually on your Facebook! So you get Bengals players to shop with children for Christmas?
Yes they spend $300 on each child. So this year, they did 50 kids.
Then the rest of the Adopt a Family program, does that come from different donors?
Different donors and sponsors. I grew a real good relationship with my sponsors and so they would just share with family, friends, people they work with and every year I would get more and more families. Our Angel Toy program … we have about six Christmas programs that we do. One of them, they do downtown. The Angel Toy Program. I was the pioneer for that program. Sacred Hart. So a lot of the holiday programs that we do, the Lord blessed me to lay the foundation where they still run today.
Very cool. I was reading in your WCPO story that you’re someone who has been there. You’ve been right there where a lot of the people you work with are. Being a single parent and having been low-income in the past. How do you feel like having that experience impacts your work?
It impacts because I’m able to relate and really understand. Not just understand what a person is going through, but I’m able to understand some of the root causes; some of the strongholds that people that are single parents and even guys, that people face that live in poverty.
What do you think are some of the biggest root causes or strongholds? What are some things too that people who haven’t experienced this don’t see or are their misconceptions?
This is one of my favorite quotes: when people know better, they do better. A lot of times when you are poverty, certain things you’re not exposed to. You’re not exposed to budgeting your money because there’s really no money. You look at it like you don’t have any money to budget. And if it’s been from generations. If you have families or parents that live from paycheck to paycheck. Because not everybody have been on assistance, but some people are in poverty, they just have a generation where people just had jobs where it was just living from paycheck to paycheck. Nobody was taught how to budget. Nobody was taught how to save; how to invest. I just found this out from one of my classmates in We Lead. She shared how for her niece and nephew for their birthday, she don’t do anything for them. She gives them $25 on a money CD. I never was exposed to that and most people in poverty are not exposed to investing because you live in the now. You live in survival mode. You’re not looking towards the future. You’re looking to now. What do I got to do right now? How am I to pay this bill right now? How am I gonna get my rent paid right now?
And then when you do have some extra, you’re excited. You’re going to spend it.
And you know you get your tax income check, most people in poverty the first thing they talk about is getting a car, getting furniture and stuff like that. It’s still living in the now, you know. And then buying a cute outfit, you know! Especially for women, you know. Me, I’ve always worked even when I was a teenager, so I always loved to dress.
Yeah, me too. So what are some of the other strongholds that keep people in poverty?
Strongholds is like a lot of people in poverty sometimes the people that they are connected to is more toxic than supportive than encouraging and pushing. You have people who have the same type of mindset. And if somebody is trying to do something different, then you have a lot of people instead of encouraging talk more negative. Like that’s not gonna happen. I think it was Tasha that said in the performance, “you’re never gonna amount to nothing. That ain’t gonna work.”
Do you find that that’s a mixture of jealousy a little bit and also just like it hasn’t happened for them, so why would it happen for anyone else?
Yes! And sometimes in poverty unless you’re in a good … what helped me was that I was blessed to get in a good, solid church. When I got exposed to a relationship with God and got exposed to what faith is. Faith is the things hoped for but yet not seen. So when I griped hold of faith in God, that’s when my imagination of what I could do, where I could be and that things are not always going to be like this. That’s when it happened.
So you were talking about the toxic environments. Now you’ve started Sister Circle. How long has that been around?
Sister Circle has been around for seven years now.
So yeah tell me about starting it and what it is today.
When I first started Sister Circle, of course free food is always the key to get people out no matter who they are. And so I made a flyer about a women’s support group. So when I first started, it was between 12-13 women who came. The first session we had, I wrote words down. Some words was like friendship. Some was like foregiveness. Some hope, love. Some was prosperity, faith. I can’t remember all of them, but everyone had to pick a word. Each person when they picked their word explained to us what that word means to you or where you at in your life with that word. This when I knew this group was going to be so impactful to me and each other. One of the ladies, the word she picked was friends. When she picked friends, she started crying and she started saying her mom was her best friend. Her mom had, it had not been a whole year since her mom passed away. So she expressed what she was going through. The another person in the group shared her testimony with her about how her momma had died about three years ago and she know what she’s going through. Sister Circle, the age start at 16 on up to 87. So then there was a senior in the group who poured into her. So everyone just wanted to encourage her. So stopped in that moment, she was the center focus and we all just started encouraging her. So after everyone encouraged her in the group, I went and hugged her and prayed for her.
So that’s how it started in the beginning. What Sister Circle is now is a group of women that comes together and we’re still supporting. St. Vincent DePaul, we support the people in the group but the group support each other … When I started Sister Circle, it was probably one or two people that was volunteering in the community. 98% of the group now is community involved.
I feel like what the group has become is a place of a making of a leader. I see leaders in the group now. They’re leading, whether they’re leading something in the community, they’re leading something at church. It has birthed and reproduced I would say I was able to duplicate what I was able to do in the women and now they’re duplicating into other people. So it’s just continuing duplication of leadership.
So you talked about using your gifts. What do you think your strongest gifts are?
Well my strongest gift is prayer. My second gift is serving people. I love serving.
And you do that all day here. What does your day to day look like here?
Well we help people with rent and utilities during the week. During the week, we help with vouchers to go to our store, birth certificates. So I do all our emergency assistance. I’m always seeking ways to grow professionally. Not only am I taking classes through We Lead, but I’m doing national seminars, webinars and live workshops here in the city. So I continue to educate myself so I can go to whatever that next level is.
What does being a woman mean to you?
Being a woman to me, number one, means being pritzy. Keeping your hair done. Looking cute like a princess and being able to have that spirit of nurturing. I think women, we naturally have a nurturing spirit and we’re more sensitive, most of the time, to situations than men is. It is what is is. That’s how God created us. Men are get to the point people. Women are “I want to understand. I want to listen and I want to show you that I care.” So being a woman is, not that men don’t care, but I think we show another side of us. We bring another definition of caring, another definition of nurturing and another definition of God.
Anything you want to add?
I believe God has created us all with God-given gifts. And whatever gift we have is not just for us. It’s to edify one another. When people begin to understand that more, I think we’ll have less people being jealous, less people criticizing and less people trying to sabatoge or pull someone else down. We’re all on the road of life. We all make mistakes. We all have challenges. We all have battles … If I was to encourage somebody, I’d say no matter where you are in your life, no matter what challenges you face, keep moving. Keep moving because the race is not given to the swift or the strong, but to those who endure til the end. And anybody that has any successful life will tell you that they experienced failure. That’s how they learned success. So I would just encourage people to live your dreams, know you can live them and that with God, all things are possible.
