The Arkansas Single Guardian Scholarship Fund is proud to acknowledge Jasmine Harris of Jackson County as our December 2025 Scholar of the Month. Jasmine is a faithful mom, a future registered nurse, and an instance of extraordinary perseverance within the face of problem.
Her ardour for serving to folks started lengthy earlier than she entered nursing college. Rising up, she helped take care of her disabled sister, an expertise that formed her compassionate nature and planted the seed for her profession in well being care.
For Jasmine, the motivation behind this dream is easy and highly effective.
“I’ve at all times wished to be a nurse,” she mentioned. “I’ve at all times had a robust want to take care of others.”
That motivation has carried Jasmine via each problem, together with one of many hardest moments of her life. In 2018, Jasmine skilled a devastating complication: the lack of imaginative and prescient in a single eye. Adjusting to a prosthetic eye, not solely bodily, however emotionally, examined her power in methods she by no means anticipated.
“I needed to study to deal with the lack of imaginative and prescient in my eye, life modifications, and melancholy,” she mentioned. “I realized that the lack of my eye didn’t imply that my dream was misplaced, and I might nonetheless attain my aim of changing into an RN.”
With the encouragement of her household and her personal willpower, Jasmine stored transferring ahead. She reenrolled at school, stepped into the demanding world of nursing, and refused to let obstacles outline her future.
Jasmine’s nursing journey started at Arkansas State College–Newport (ASUN), the place she earned her licensed sensible nurse (LPN) certificates. She first acquired the ASPSF scholarship in Spring 2023, after listening to about this system from one other scholar in her LPN program.
Since then, the scholarship has helped her cowl college provides and pay for obligatory nursing certification exams. Past the monetary aid, Jasmine says the wraparound assist has ready her for all times after commencement.
“The workshops have helped me a lot in studying about funds, house possession, and making ready me for a considerable enhance in earnings upon completion of the RN program.”
Jasmine has continued her training in ASUN’s Registered Nursing Affiliate Diploma program, the place she’s going to proudly graduate on December 9, 2025. This can be a milestone she has been dreaming of since she was a little bit lady.
In the present day, she works as an LPN on the Arkansas Division of Corrections Grimes Unit, gaining invaluable expertise and strengthening the medical abilities she’ll carry into her RN profession.
However the deepest supply of inspiration in her life is her daughter, 4-year-old Jalaiya, a shiny and imaginative little lady who watches her mom with admiration.
“I wished to be an individual who my daughter might look as much as,” Jasmine mentioned. “To be motivated to work exhausting herself, proceed her training, and make a superb life.”
Her willpower is mirrored in her daughter, too.
“My little one mimics me finding out and pretends that she is a nurse,” she mentioned. “She loves to decorate up in her nurse costume together with her stethoscope.”
To the donors who make alternatives like this potential for single mother and father, Jasmine says:
“Thanks a lot for the monetary assist to assist in finishing the RN program and for making ASPSF assist packages accessible to develop abilities wanted to arrange for the long run upon program completion.”
As she approaches commencement, Jasmine’s sights are set on the following chapter, working in a hospital emergency or cardiology division, and ultimately persevering with her training to advance her nursing profession even additional.
This December, we proudly have a good time Jasmine, not only for incomes her RN diploma, however for the braveness, love, and perseverance she embodies on daily basis. She is a reminder that desires delayed are by no means desires denied, and that with assist, willpower, and coronary heart, single mother and father throughout Arkansas can construct brighter futures for themselves and their kids.
