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Source: Richmond Times-Dispatch, Va.存倉Dec. 17--Ten years ago, Tonya Jones was lost. She didn't have a job and didn't know how to find one.She was a high school dropout with no self-confidence or direction -- until she found a mentor she affectionately calls "Ma Muriel.""She guided me. She helped me find my way," Jones said of Muriel Miller Branch, who in 2003 founded a mentorship program called WIT -- Women Inspired to Transform.But it wasn't just spiritual guidance Jones received from Miller Branch. She encouraged Jones to go back to school to work on a GED, sat with her at the computer to show her how to look for a job and write a r廥um?."Anything that I needed she gave me," Jones said, whether it was money to catch a bus or the proper clothes to wear to a job interview.Miller Branch is a retired librarian for Richmond city schools and author and co-author of nine books, including "Pennies to Dollars: The Story of Maggie Lena Walker."In the late 1990s, she was president of the Maggie L. Walker Historical Foundation as it worked to restore Walker's home in Jackson Ward.But all along she had another goal in mind, said her longtime friend Earlene Evans, who worked in the Thompson Middle School library with Branch and co-authored three books with her."She's always had this dream of helping other people," Evans said. For the past decade Miller Branch and other volunteer mentors "have been serving and helping other women to get on their feet and to move back into society."Miller Branch said the idea for WIT was planted in her mind when she saw a mother verbally abusing her toddler in a store.The mother was off with a friend leaving the toddler in charge of his baby brother, she said. When the toddler tried to keep his brother from grabbing some candy, the mother shouted at the child."I couldn't take it any longer," Miller Branch recalled. "I said, 'This was not his fault. Please don't speak to him like that.' She looked at me and I thought, 'Well, she's just going to hit me, but I had to say it.' "Miller Branch got into her car thinking "somebody ought to do something, and the answer that I got was, why not you?"She said it took several years of prayer to work through how to implement her idea, and credits the volunteers who have joined her as mentors for making the program work.The program has about 15 active mentors now, Miller Branch said, and works in partnership with St. Peter Baptist Church in Glen Allen and the YWCA.So far, about 25 women between the ages 儲存f 22 and 45 have come through the program, Miller Branch said. Some have been in abusive relationships or have had drug problems. Others need help with parenting.They attend 10-week sessions that provide training to help them manage their finances, relationships or life in general. Many remain connected with their mentors and each other long after the sessions end."It's a sisterhood of women," said Patricia Glover, who joined WIT in its second year."Still to this day we have a bond with each other," she said. "Spiritually, mentally, financially -- we're always there for each other."Now a dialysis technician, Glover, who had been a housekeeper, credits the program with giving her "the motivation to do better."A few years ago, when she found out her mentor had died and felt the room begin to spin, she recalled, she turned immediately to Ma Muriel."She's like the mother of all the women," Glover said. "She never judges us. We can go to her with anything."Miller Branch said she usually holds about two training sessions a year, but the work with the women is ongoing and mutual. When Miller Branch's mother was dying, she said, Tonya Jones helped care for her.Miller Branch will begin the next WIT session in January, with meetings to be held downtown in the YWCA.The goal, she said, is just "to guide people to wholeness, to productivity, to a better place in their lives."Bernette Hardy-Keyes said Miller Branch has the passion and compassion necessary for the long-term commitment that a program such as WIT requires.Hardy-Keyes, who works for Dominion Resources, said she signed on to help the first time she attended a WIT meeting about five years ago because she was impressed with the goals.Until you're involved with a group like WIT, she said, "you sort of take things for granted" that people can work through their issues "the way you are."But that's not the case for people "who just don't have the opportunity to venture out and broaden horizons. They're unaware of things they can do to try to become self-sufficient and live a wholesome life," Hardy-Keyes said.WIT tries to make a difference by helping them realize "that life will throw things at you. Sometimes we're knocked to our knees but we can have the strength with the right resources to get back up and go on with our lives."Copyright: ___ (c)2013 the Richmond Times-Dispatch (Richmond, Va.) Visit the Richmond Times-Dispatch (Richmond, Va.) at .timesdispatch.com Distributed by MCT Information Services迷你倉