Single Mothers Outreach has garnered much attention with the creation of Empowering HeARTs: Celebrating Women, Art, and Community. The benefit exhibition and gala helps raise funds for SMO’s mission, which is to empower single parents and their children by providing hope, support and resources to help families become self-sustaining and thrive.

Empowering HeARTS honors exemplary women through compelling visual art combined with the power of the honorees’ stories, making the event a stellar art exhibition.

“I have met so many women with very powerful stories, and I thought it would be wonderful to choose a select group of women to honor and tell their stories to our community,” said DaAnne Smith, the organization’s executive director. She credits photographer Yoti Telio with having suggested “that we hold an art contest to give space and a place for local artists to create original works of art, visualizing these powerful stories. That is how Empowering HeArts was born.”

The fifth anniversary gala event will bring together honorees and professional visual artists including oil painters, watercolorists, mixed media artists and photographers in red-carpet style. The event is intended not only to boost the morale and self-esteem of the single parent, but also to give hope to their children.

Perhaps you are a single parent or were raised in a one-parent home and recall the sacrifices made to put food on the table or buy shoes for the kids. According to Single Mothers Outreach, “parenting is too important a responsibility to bear alone, yet all too often, single mothers and fathers are forced to do just that. Because we believe that effective parenting leads to successful, well-adjusted children, Single Mothers Outreach embraces families facing sudden housing instability, income loss, emotional trauma and social deterioration as the result of divorce, abandonment or widowhood.”

Join DaAnne Smith and Single Mothers Outreach in celebrating the fifth anniversary of Empowering HeArts. Artists, let your heartstrings sing and artwork shine for a worthy cause. For more information, visit www.SingleMothersOutreach.org.

Gloria Locke is a Santa Clarita resident and producer of “SCV-Arts & Entertainment,” which airs Fridays and Sundays on SCVTV.