Support Arin As She Earns Her MFA

Arin Ashley organisiert diese Kampagne.

Spende geschützt

Over the years, I have learned that reaching out for help is not one of my strong suits. I used to pride myself on my independent nature. I did my best to rely only on myself. I believed that needing other people meant that I was weak or less than.

I now know that it takes a lot more strength and courage to allow yourself to be vulnerable and ask for help.

After becoming pregnant just before my last year of undergraduate school at the University of Louisville, I quickly learned the importance of community. As a young family with both parents still working towards bachelor's degrees, we had to rely on friends and family for so many things. It was not easy, but with the help and support we had from our community we were both able to graduate. Our little one was only 5 months old when I graduated and he was just two years old when Mario finished his degree.

Last year we took a huge leap when I was accepted into the Master's of Fine Arts program at Tyler School of Art at Temple University. With a lot of help, we picked up and moved from Louisville, KY to Philadelphia, PA. It has been an exciting, stressful, scary, enlightening and challenging experience thus far. As I completed my first year of graduate school our now 5 year old graduated from kindergarten.

Now, a new challenge has arisen. The rental home we moved into just last summer is going up on the market. We did not expect to move again so soon and it is going to be a big financial burden.

This money will help us through this move, and it will help to support us through the next year as I finish my graduate program.
-I do have monumental student loan debt.
-I am not asking any of you to pay off my student loans.
This money will help us with the cost of this unexpected move and it will provide us with a very small cushion in case something like this comes up again in the near future. It will also help us to pay for after school care for our son.

We appreciate everything our friends and family have already done to help us get to this point, and we know that without you this opportunity would not have been possible.

Thank you,
Arin, Mario, Dom