Ten Years, Ten Women: Keaw

Before joining Better Me, Keaw described herself as someone without much confidence, unsure how to handle problems as they came up, and inclined to let others make decisions for her. Her days were built around the rhythms of farm work, with little space to think beyond the next season.

The program gave her a set of tools she uses together: how to protect herself, how to cope when circumstances change suddenly, how to save with intention rather than react to money as it comes and goes, and how to set goals instead of letting life happen to her. Learning to plan, she says, changed how she thinks about her own future, not just her finances.

The clearest shift she names is in decision-making itself. She's become someone willing to think things through and make a choice, rather than deferring to what others expect of her. That change in how she approaches problems, more than any single skill, is what she credits with carrying her out of farm work and into a classroom, where she now works as a Teaching Assistant.

What she's most proud of today is simpler than the career change itself: she doesn't give up easily, and she keeps looking for ways to keep improving, even now, years after finishing the program.