Taking a Step Forward with the Help of a Toyota
For an entire year, Nicole walked everywhere she needed to go. Through sun, snow, sleet and rain, she trudged to work and daily errands. Such an experience, one would think, would have run her down, but she says it only made her stronger.
“I knew God was going to bless me with something,” she says, and that “something” turned out to be the Board of Child Care’s Ways to Work car loan program. She had owned a car at one time, but it was stolen. When a co-worker told her about the Ways to Work program, she applied for and received a low-interest loan to purchase a 2004, cherry red Toyota Solara.
Now that car has become a source of inspiration for Nicole. It not only makes it easier for her to get to her job as a physical therapy technician at St. Agnes Medical Center in Baltimore, she plans to take her career a step further and attend school to become a physical therapist or registered nurse.
“It is definitely motivation versus me depending on people. I can just go ahead and take myself,” Nicole says.
The 26-year-old also sees the car improving life for her 12-year-old brother Antione who is autistic and under her care. Their mother, she says, has a learning disability and cannot read or write and, therefore, does not have her driver’s license. That leaves tending to Antione’s needs up to Nicole. Now that they have the Toyota, they’ve been enjoying outings to restaurants, the zoo and the aquarium.
“I try to encourage myself and my little brother because I don’t want to follow in the same footsteps,” Nicole says of her mother, who gave birth to Nicole as a teenager and dropped out of school. “I want to do more for my life and more for my brother’s life. Eventually, down the line, I do see myself living in a house with a two-car garage. I have my whole life ahead of me and I have nothing holding me back.”
