Each year, more than 700 teen girls give birth in Lucas County, according to the Ohio Department of Health.

Having a child drastically changes these young women’s lives and many do not have the support they needed to keep their goals on track. In addition, negative stereotypes often add a stigma to teen pregnancy that can make it difficult for women to overcome obstacles.

Given these challenges, one local charity aims to change that narrative and improve the lives of teen moms in Northwest Ohio.

Mom’s House is a Toledo nonprofit that assists mothers aged13-24 while they raise their children. It was recently named the 2015-16 next charity recipient by Chicks for Charity.

RELATED: Vetter: Chicks for Mom’s House

Founded 21 years ago, Mom’s House offers 30 women and children highly rated childhood education and adult classes, which leaders hope will break the cycle of poverty.

“We play the mom role, but also teach our girls how to be a mom to their child,” Mom’s House Executive Director Christina Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez’s enthusiastic spirit is contagious and it’s obvious how much she cares about the family members she’s gained while running the organization.

“We really treat the children like they’re our own and it’s a big family,” she said. “It’s so rewarding.”

While enrolled in the program, children receive a four-star-rated preschool education; 90 percent of the children are ready to test into kindergarten afterward, Rodriquez said. In addition, the mothers take classes to learn about home safety, healthy relationships, family wellness and parenting techniques. The Mom’s House team also assists with child care while the mothers attend classes at local high schools and colleges.

Brittney Goldi, 28, is a graduate of Mom’s House and credits her success to the organization’s staff. Aside from assisting with her child, they were there when Goldi’s mother died.

“They were my counselors and the first people I would call when I had an issue,” Goldi said. “They took on the bereavement role for me.”

Goldi gave birth to her son Jeremy when she was 17 years old. She was still in high school and had a difficult time finding babysitters and overall emotional support while raising her newborn son.

After connecting with Mom’s House, she enrolled in the program and quickly found the assistance she needed. Thanks to her new “family,” Goldi began classes at Owens Community College and finished her nursing degree at Mercy College of Ohio, graduating in 2010.

“They really were my family. I didn’t have the support I needed to take care of my son before, and they helped me outside of regular hours and were more than willing to go above and beyond,” Goldi said.

Goldi is now a palliative care coordinator for Mercy. She’s also married, having met her husband during her time at Mom’s House. The organization also helped him earn his degree and start a career as a booking officer for Lucas County. She and her husband are now proud parents to three boys.

After all of Goldi’s success, she makes sure to give back to Mom’s House and recently spoke during the group’s presentation to Chicks for Charity as a finalist for the Chicks’ next charity recipient. After four years of applying, Goldi’s Cinderella story won the Chicks over and led them to choose Mom’s House for its new charity.

“This was a big win for us,” Rodriguez said.

Every two years, Chicks for Charity selects a new nonprofit initiative to support.

“All 501(c)(3) official groups in Northwest Ohio that are small, under the radar and willing to work with us to get word out are eligible,” said Martha Vetter, founder of Chicks for Charity.

The Chicks recently wrapped up their work with Shared Lives Studio, raising $115,000 over the past two years.

Vetter said Goldi and the Mom’s House presenters made a lasting impact on the more than 80 members of Chicks, which led to their decision.

“They told raw and personal stories,” Vetter said. “It was really moving and wonderful.”

The Chicks will meet with members of the Mom’s House board in January and begin the initiative, but Vetter said it’s up to the nonprofit to decide where to use the funding.

As for joining the Chicks, Vetter said anyone can become a member as long as you plan something “fun.”

“Any chick at any age can join. Just plan a fun and unique event with your family or coworkers and raise at least $75 to give to the charity,” Vetter said. “Anyone can give a little, and it will add up to a lot.”

Rodriguez is planning on using the extra funds from Chicks to develop the group’s family wellness and mentoring programs. One of the new projects includes Mom’s House work with attorney Gretchen DeBacker. They are working with 14 female attorneys for the new Sisters in Law initiative, which assists young mothers with legal issues.

“Many women are involved with legal battles that are hard to navigate and these women can build relationships and assist them,” Rodriguez said.

In addition, the attorneys can help the Mom’s House students prepare for job interviews by building strong resumes and providing tips for proper work attire.

The extra funding and exposure from Chicks for Charity will allow Rodriguez and her team at Mom’s House to  continue allowing young moms like Goldi to keep following their goals to success.

“They’ve always been my support system and they’re always there,” Goldi said. “The women at Mom’s House are amazing. They took me from being a pregnant teen mom to being a palliative care coordinator.”

“We can’t do it all, but we definitely see the cycle of poverty being broken,” Rodriguez said.

Toledoan David Lymanstall has been fascinated by the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race for as long as he can remember, going so far as raising his own husky dogs, teaching the Iditarod to his students and visiting Alaska twice in the late ’80s and early ’90s.

Now, Lymanstall, director of the nursing program at the University of Toledo and a published poet, has secured the opportunity of a lifetime and will be able to scratch “Iditarod volunteer” off his bucket list.

Lymanstall, 57, will help “line up” as many as 1,280 dogs at the ceremonial start in Anchorage, Alaska, on March 7, and again at the official start in Willow, Alaska, on March 8.

“I’m really excited about it,” Lymanstall said. “This is one of my bucket lists. I absolutely loved it up there. I went to a few husky farms around Nome. When I came home, that’s when I got my first husky.”

He owned Sitka for 14 years until she died in 1997. Five weeks later he found Gracie, a cinnamon and white husky, from a breeder in Lambertville. He owned Gracie until last January when she died of organ failure. Lymanstall said he plans to rescue an adult husky after this year’s Iditarod.

The Iditarod originated in 1925 when a diphtheria epidemic threatened isolated and icebound Nome, Alaska, prompting a relay of dog teams to deliver a serum that saved hundreds of lives. The final two legs of the journey were completed by Gunnar Kaasen with his lead dog, Balto. They traveled through a blizzard with winds over 80 mph. The relay of 20 mushers made the 700- mile trip in 127 hours, according to the official Iditarod website.

The effort received international attention and the mushers received special gold medals and a commendation by President Calvin Coolidge. Statues of Balto were erected around the country and the age of the sled dog went out in a blaze of glory, according to the website. In 1973, the first official Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race was run between Anchorage and Nome.

When Lymanstall taught seventh and eighth grades at West Side Montessori, he sent for teaching material on the race. He tacked up a map of Alaska in his room and used it for lessons on geography and cultural history. Students would push in pins to mark the location of mushers on their trek from Anchorage to Nome. The student who tracked the winning musher would win a prize.

Lymanstall contacted a tour guide out of Alaska to plan his trip from March 2-10. Volunteering for the Iditarod race was an optional part of the trip. He contacted the Iditarod Trail Committee, the nonprofit that heads the race and was accepted as a volunteer in December.

Volunteers come from all walks of life and from around the world, said Julie Busch, Iditarod media coordinator.

“There are more than 1,500 volunteers that come from all over the world — Norway, France, Germany, Spain — you name it,” Busch said during a phone call from Anchorage. “We’ve had people come from Korea. It’s the premier sled dog race in the world.”

Lymanstall will be one of about 200 dog handler volunteers, who should be physically fit and must earn a certificate and undergo special training, said Diane Johnson, Iditarod volunteer coordinator.

“The dogs are priority one, so handlers must know how to safely move the dogs from the mushers’ staging area to the starting line,” Johnson said in an email from her base in South Dakota. She is also the education director of the Iditarod.

Eighty mushers have signed up for the race and each one will start the race with up to 16 dogs, Johnson said.

“One day I woke up in October and I needed to do this (volunteer). This is really my focus: I’m just fascinated by it, I can’t explain it,” Lymanstall said.

Bill Dickinson of Grand Rapids, Ohio,will also participate in the 2015 Iditarod as a guard for Trail No. 6, which is near Wasilla, Alaska. He’ll be stay in Alaska from March 1-21.

“I like to sightsee and take pictures and network,” he said.

Dickinson said he had plans to move to Alaska in 1976 but got hurt at work and had to cancel those plans. He instead bought a farm.

Influential community leaders stepped up to the plate at Toledo City Council chambers Jan. 14 to weigh in on ProMedica’s plan to move its headquarters Downtown.

The move is projected to bring $9.2 million in net revenue to Toledo over 10 years, city officials announced.

Joe Napoli, Carty Finkbeiner, Judge James G. Carr and Bob LaClair were a few of those who addressed Council as members of the public to weigh in on the health care company’s plan to move Downtown in 2017.

The most controversial part of Pro- Medica’s plan is the proposed construction of a six-story parking structure in the southwest corner of Promenade Park. The structure — which would occupy 14 percent of the park’s surface area and 120 feet of the park’s 500 feet of frontage along Summit Street — is a key part of ProMedica’s $60-million plan to move up to 1,000 employees into the former Toledo Edison Steam Plant and KeyBank building Downtown.

ProMedica officials have said future phases could bring as many as 2,500 employees Downtown. There is no timeline on when subsequent phases would be implemented.

“We shouldn’t kid ourselves — many business leaders and investors are watching this decision with great interest,” said Napoli, president and general manager of the Toledo Mud Hens and Toledo Walleye. “ProMedica wasn’t recruited to come Downtown, they called us. Small business leaders that are on the fence about moving Downtown are asking themselves, ‘If the City of Toledo doesn’t welcome ProMedica to Downtown, why would they welcome us?’”

Napoli, who also serves as chair of the ProMedica Toledo Children’s Hospital board, said ProMedica should be commended for being committed to moving Downtown.

“The lack of ample, convenient parking will seriously hinder the future growth of Downtown Toledo,” he said. “To their credit, ProMedica didn’t overreact to the Downtown parking challenge. Most others would have given up, and they did for years. Instead, ProMedica embraced the challenge, studied the issue, and came up with a solution — exactly what a responsible corporate citizen would do.”

The first part of the meeting consisted of a Q-and-A session between Council and Matt Sapara, city development director, and Eileen Granata, the city’s senior attorney, on the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the city and ProMedica. The MOU sets forth key components of the project, highlighting commitments necessary from both the city and ProMedica to keep the project moving forward.

Sapara said the project would amount to net revenue of $9.2 million to the city over 10 years, while the expense to the city for the first year would be $693,000. The city would convey the land for the parking garage to ProMedica at no cost. The company, in turn, would restore and put $2 million worth of renovations into Promenade Park, which would remain open for use by the public.

The city would be responsible for maintaining the park. If, however, the park were not maintained to ProMedica’s liking, it could step in and maintain the park at its own cost.

Councilman Mike Craig voiced concern over the city’s ability to maintain the park.

“Park maintenance is not something the city of Toledo is known for,” he said. “I would feel better taking that money and writing a check every year for the maintenance of that property. I just don’t think we’re going to maintain that property to their standards.”

Councilman Jack Ford, who worked for ProMedica for six years, pressed Sapara and Granata for answers on several topics he felt had not been properly addressed. He asked how significantly the MOU has changed since the company first presented it to the city.

“It has not changed in the sense of the scope of the project,” Granata said. “There have been certainly changes in terms of some of the property, in terms of some of the ownership and how that property is handled. … There were substantive changes.”

The MOU states that the city will also convey most of the green space between the steam plant and Imagination Station to ProMedica, which would allow use of the land by the public until or unless ProMedica decides to modify the site to accommodate its needs.

Ford questioned if this control of the site could be turned over to Pro- Medica at any time, as no specific timeline is given.

Granata said under this arrangements ProMedica could in fact take over the site as it sees fit for future expansion.

“I don’t really know what exactly that means in terms of future plans, but you’re correct in your statement,” she said.

“Should that be important to us, or is that a toss-away issue?” Ford responded.

Sapara said there aren’t any tossaway issues, but any future plans remain open-ended at this time.

More than 20 members of the public signed up to speak at the hearing.

After Napoli, a number of prominent business individuals addressed Council, including Steve Cavanaugh of HCR ManorCare, which employs 800 people Downtown, and Sara Swisher, director of EPIC Toledo, which was created by the Toledo Regional Chamber of Commerce to attract and retain young professionals in the region. Both are proponents of ProMedica’s plan.

LaClair, president and CEO of Fifth Third Bank in Northwest Ohio, agreed with much of Napoli’s statement.

LaClair, a ProMedica board member, said, “It’s very difficult to recruit people to Toledo. The first thing a candidate says when they come to meet with us is ‘Where are all the people Downtown? Why do you have all these empty buildings?’

“We need people walking around Downtown during the day, showing up in offices, eating in restaurants during the lunch hour. That’s what’s going to revitalize Downtown Toledo. We’ve got an opportunity that we have not seen in 30 years to do that right now.”

Former Toledo Mayor Carty Finkbeiner also addressed Council.

“New jobs and great hospitals are very important to Toledo’s future,” he said. “But so is fresh air, clean water — as we learned last summer — and public waterfront parks.”

Finkbeiner said he hopes Pro- Medica’s campus Downtown would not mirror that of Owens Corning, which sits a short distance south of Promenade Park.

“We did isolate and insulate Owens Corning on that piece of land,” he said. “They have their own restaurants, their own dry-cleaning businesses, their own day care centers, their own workout facilities. They drive in, park their car in the morning and go home at night and not have to support, patronize or integrate themselves into all of those small businesses that are yearning, begging for their business. We need to make sure that the guidelines for this integrate, not isolate, the ProMedica campus from all of the existing businesses that have in some cases been hanging on by the skin of their teeth in Downtown Toledo.”

Carr, a former federal district judge for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, said he remains unconvinced there are no options other than building a six-story garage at Promenade Park. At the same time, he admitted this project must move forward for the sake of Toledo’s future success.

Carr urged Council to put a provision in the agreement that if Pro- Medica or a successor were to vacate the premises, the company would then be responsible for tearing down the parking garage.

Toledo resident Jane Randall gave an impassioned speech about why she thought the proposal was wrong for Toledo.

“Why are we even talking about giving away one inch of the little postage stamp piece of greenery we have Downtown?” she asked. “It’s a shame. Do your best, but for heaven’s sake, please do your homework.”

At the end of the four-hour meeting, Sapara addressed some of the comments and questions raised in the public statement portion of the meeting, during which many said the city and ProMedica should explore more parking options.

“There are no alternatives, I’m sorry,” he said. “We can talk about ‘It should go here, it should be there.’ The reality of it is, [an alternative] doesn’t exist.”

Several business leaders told Council that current parking structures could not be used because that would only serve to prevent other companies from coming Downtown because their employees would then have no parking.

Toledo Mayor D. Michael Collins noted the parking garage concern is not a new one, and that a parking garage for the redevelopment of the steam plant was noted as a critical piece of its success as far back as 2000.

“The window of opportunity for us is here today,” he said. “What are we going to tell the future generations of Toledo when they say, ‘I’d really like to be in Toledo but there is no opportunity?’… Will we reject that over a very narrow sliver of property that in the grand scheme of things is never going to save this city?”

Collins noted that having a debate on the matter is a positive thing, but “I also think the answer is crystal clear.” Council is expected to vote Jan. 20.