The seeds of Sarah Hemminger’s idea for Thread were planted in high-school when she met Ryan, a young man who had lost almost everything, and she found out what he had gone through. His father went to prison, and a car accident left his mother temporarily unable to walk. She then lost her job, and they were forced to leave their house in the suburbs and move to public housing in Indianapolis’s inner city. They descended into poverty.
His mother became depressed and then addicted to the painkiller Dilaudid. Ryan was a top student until his life began to unravel. He missed over thirty days of school, and his grades dropped precipitously. He was close to failing ninth grade, and dropping out of school completely.
But then a handful of concerned teachers stepped in and formed an informal surrogate family around him. They assisted Ryan with his schoolwork, and helped him with clothing, food, and money for the bus. Sometimes they even did his laundry. On a daily basis, they offered encouragement, tutoring, and guidance for years. By the time he was in twelfth grade — when Sarah, who was in the same high school, first met him—Ryan was again earning top grades and had become a varsity athlete. He was ultimately accepted to the United States Naval Academy, one of the most elite universities in the country.
Sarah and Ryan dated, and later married, settling in Baltimore for graduate studies. Sarah felt somewhat isolated in their new city, and she was also aware of the great inequalities between her environment at Johns Hopkins University and a nearby high school. She noticed how much the students in this high school reminded her of her husband’s story when they first met — talented but academically underperforming, and with few supportive relationships. So Sarah started an organization with her husband’s help that could replicate for youth the same family-like social support system that had changed the trajectory of Ryan’s future. And Thread was born.
In 2004, fifteen students from that high school, Dunbar, participated in Thread’s pilot program. All were at risk of failing out of school because of some combination of poor performance, chronic absenteeism, detentions, and the difficulties they faced outside class.
This early effort, too, was marked by a special friendship. Thirteen year old Michael (name changed to respect his privacy) had been abandoned by his mother who had become a heroin addict and could no longer take care of him. Starting with homework help, pizza, and rides to school, Michael and Sarah gradually built a familial relationship. He would stay with her and Ryan when he had nowhere to sleep, play basketball games with Ryan on the weekend, and join them when they went camping.
It wasn’t perfect — they had disagreements with Michael, who sometimes wanted to carry a gun, and got in and out of trouble. But Sarah stuck with him. Gradually, they built deep trust. He started calling her Ma, because she was the person he called whenever he needed help. He eventually graduated from high school, and then from college. As he says, “I know it’s a cliché, but I really don’t know where I’d be without Sarah. But I know now, I’m not doing this all on my own.”
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The way we Americans neglect the next generation is one of our country’s greatest weaknesses. Far too many children grow up in unstable homes and fragile neighborhoods, disadvantaging them for life. Today there are 23 million American children living with either one parent or no parents—an astounding figure, with little precedent in any advanced country. The data are quite clear: kids from unstable families grow up—on average—with greater physical, emotional, and academic challenges, with some having less language and brain development than their peers from stable two-parent families.
Where they grow up also matters. Economist Raj Chetty has shown how neighborhoods with large numbers of single-parent families pull achievement for all children down—including those living in intact families. The result is either a virtuous or a vicious cycle—with social habitats improving or deteriorating over time.
Wider problems beyond underperforming schools result from unstable homes and social habitats: more crime, more inequality, fewer skilled workers, and unhealthier, less engaged citizens. If schools and youth clubs are weak, they may not be willing or able to raise expectations and teach the importance of having a job and a partner before having a child. And if a place has fewer constructive role models framing decisions related to relationships, dating, and marriage, along with cultural norms that encourage online hookups and casual relationships, children will grow up with little idea of the value of stable families, and they will be less likely to forge stable households when they become adults.
Many foundations, nonprofits, and federal programs have tried to help these children in various ways, such as improving schools, ensuring that fathers provide financial child support, strengthening foster care, and offering mentoring programs like Big Brothers Big Sisters, America’s largest donor- and volunteer-supported mentoring network for youth. But these initiatives have limited impact for two reasons: first, they rarely address root causes such as family instability, weak social support systems, and poor neighborhood dynamics, and they usually don’t work long-term or focus on a child’s most intimate relationships. Second, most initiatives select the highest achieving students from poor and fragile neighborhoods in order to ensure that they have ample access to the education, opportunities, and social networks they need to succeed in life. These initiatives do little for those who need it most.
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Thread identifies children who are underserved and particularly vulnerable, targeting students who are academically in the bottom quarter of their ninth-grade class and then committing to them for ten years. This is enough time to make a real difference, especially given that the time period covers what is arguably the most pivotal time in any child’s transition to adulthood, ages fifteen to twenty-five. Only such a long-term commitment, backed by daily nurturing and practical support, can reconfigure basic expectations about the world, build a web of trusting and caring relationships, and make up for all the years these students have been left behind—both academically and emotionally.
The Thread model envelopes each student with up to four “family members,” each of whom is coached by one “head of family,” who is, in turn, coached by one “grandparent,” who is coached by one paid staff community manager. This model seeks to thicken the social support system around students so they are surrounded with robust relationships that support them through high school and through the transitions to college and their first jobs.
Thread’s family commits to being there 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, for 10 years—and showing up even when told to go away, as any loving family member would. Volunteers drive students to school, help them around the house, take them to movies, and provide food if needed. They help with homework, act as sounding boards, and assist with other issues that come up in the students’ daily lives. When real danger lurks—many Baltimore neighborhoods face gang activity, gun violence, food insecurity, and homelessness—they intervene to ensure the child’s safety. No matter how challenging it is to initially engage a student, no one is ever considered too much “at risk,” and the organization has never given up on (that is, unenrolled) a young person.
Because the commitment of volunteers is key, the organization commits substantial time to ensuring that these individuals, who are mostly university students, young professionals, and retirees or empty-nesters (all of whom only commit one year at a time), are also gaining and growing from their participation. The head of family’s main job is to ensure that the volunteers are doing well personally so as to ensure that their support of students is consistent and positive.
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It helps that the relationships between volunteers and students work both ways. Sarah has described how they have become an antidote to her own loneliness and isolation, and now she and many others in the program report benefiting from the “wealth of human connection” that accompanies their work. “At some point in each of our lives we have all felt disconnected,” she says. “For some, this sense of isolation is momentary; for others, it lasts a lifetime. However long it lasts, it leaves unfulfilled our very human need to connect with and matter to others.”
A recognition that most of us suffer from social isolation in some form allows those who are more and less advantaged to feel like true partners, able to help each other on their respective journeys. Sarah explains, “Telling that story is so important. It changes how a young person feels about themselves. It’s a whole different thing to look at a [Thread] board member who you view as successful and to know that you changed their life.”
Thread proactively promotes a culture built upon specific values, encouraging everyone to “treat relationships as wealth,” “learn from all voices,” “show all the way up,” and “fail forward.” And each of these values is promoted through specific behaviors and norms. For example, “show all the way up” means being authentically present and challenging yourself to push through discomfort and connect deeply with others, while “learn from all voices” is about recognizing your own value while understanding that you have substantial room for growth.
Beyond making the relationships closer and more cohesive, these norms also help to bridge the socioeconomic and cultural differences between its students and its volunteers. Most of Thread’s youth are Black and often feel that their voices are not heard by the dominant culture. Building a culture in which they can fully participate as equals helps to overcome the difficulties in building relationships across racial, ideological, and class lines.
Ultimately, Thread hopes to remake Baltimore on two levels: at the micro level, it aims to strengthen the city’s disadvantaged neighborhoods by increasing the number of supportive relationships and building a more robust social network for a critical mass of the youth facing the most significant social and opportunity gaps; and at the macro level, it aims to build bridges, heal fractures, foster cohesion, and re-weave the social fabric of the city itself.
