ST. LOUIS, Mo. (InvestigateTV) — Allisha Jones-Pickens knows what it’s like to be a teen mother following an unexpected pregnancy. She became a mom at 14.
“I didn’t even know I was pregnant, I was detached from mentally so much because I had experienced childhood abuse, sexually,” said Jones-Pickens. “I didn’t get the support as far as it’s going to be okay. I don’t think I heard that once.”
Jones-Pickens says questions and judgment from friends and peers made her feel worse about the situation, despite very few people knowing what she had previously gone through.
“The reality is no one knew the backstory and why it was so easy for me to lay down and become pregnant,” she said.
Her personal experience with teen motherhood was one of the driving factors behind creating Community of Hope, a non-profit based out of North St. Louis, offering support and resources to teen mothers and their babies.
“I took my own past experiences, paired with working with female youth and focus in on teen moms, building that support system around them and putting those resources around them at their fingertips,” she said.
The organization was founded in 2020, before obtaining grant funding a few years later.
According to the CDC, despite a steady decline over the last several years, Missouri’s teen pregnancy rate remains among the highest in the country.
In 2024, Community of Hope helped 126 teen mothers and offered 43 mental health counseling assessments. It also provided more than 3,000 items from its “Mommy and Me” closet, along with 680 packs of diapers, 43 rides to doctors’ appointments and 72 boxes of food to its mothers.
“When you don’t have someone there to show you differently, all you’re going to do is absorb what’s around you,” said Jones-Pickens. “So these moms bouncing from place to place, or not having a stable environment, they’re learning dysfunction.”
In addition to offering baby essentials and necessities, Community of Hope also offers weekly tea talks, where mothers are able to talk openly about the struggles they’re facing, in addition to celebrating milestones.
Learn more about Community of Hope by clicking here.