DENVER — Nonprofit Warren Village is celebrating its 50th year of supporting single parents, offering childcare services and helping families move forward.
Communications manager Julia Goodman said there have been 8,000 residents at the Warren Village apartments over the last five decades. She said each one plays a part in the organization's story.
"We’re here, just as the space, the resources," Goodman said. "We’d be nothing without the residents."
Single parents can apply for one to three-bedroom spaces at the complex. Once accepted, they have access to mental health resources, daycare and education support.
"The adults, parents, don’t have to worry about where there children are, who’s watching them, while they’re focusing on career or their education," Goodman said.
Looking back at newspaper articles of Warren Village features, Goodman said the conversation around single parenthood has changed.
"The headline and the little subheadline, 'Village Offers Entrapped Single Parents a Future, Death Divorce, Desertion,'" Goodman read aloud. "It shows me how we look, so differently, as a society, how we look at single parents."
Regardless of how society felt about single parents, Goodman said Warren Village always supported whoever walked into its doors.
"Every single person who has lived here, has worked hard and been incredible," Goodman said.
One of those people is Annette Dayley. She lived at Warren Village in 1992 with two kids.
"Warren village was a really instrumental time in my life," Dayley said.
She said she can't remember how she got introduced to the program, but she can remember the people who supported her on her journey to Warren Village and beyond.
She appreciates the guidance her high school principal and workers at Warren Village gave her.
"They are so important," Dayley said. "And they were such incredible mentors and people that I truly felt cared about and understood and heard from, and I don't know where my life would be without having made those connections. And really building those relationships. If it were not for my principal, who believed in me even though as a pregnant teenager, and setting up a childcare center so that I could continue, and pushing me towards college, and then when I moved into Warren Village — I don't know how my life would look."
In the 30 years since her stay at Warren Village, Dayley said she has since gotten her bachelor's and master's degrees, became a nurse, had two more children and now has four grandchildren.
"That girl at 18," Dayley started. "I don't think she was visioning or dreaming, that was me doing it. But I don't think I really could appreciate how wonderful and big and real the dream could be."
As a part of Warren Village's 50th year, the nonprofit is bringing together historic moments for a community celebration in May. The organization is hoping to hear stories like Dayley's from other former residents, children of residents or volunteers to showcase its impact and continued reach.
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