HOUMA, La. — Twin sisters Sherry and Chery Wilmore have learned a thing or two about working together.
“I am the personality, but she can go just as hard,” said Sherry Wilmore.
That’s proven to be quite helpful for their latest mission called Laptop of Love.
“Roughly fifty percent of foster children graduate high school. Less than three percent graduate college,” said Cherry Wilmore.
These Lake Charles native sisters were in foster care by age six. Blessed with foster parents who taught them the importance of education, at 18, they became college freshman at Nicholls State University.
“We aged out and registered for college all in the same day, on June the 4th,” said Sherry Wilmore.
As foster kids, going to college came with free laptops from Volunteers of America. It took us through our entire time at Nicholls State University,” said Sherry Wilmore. “It gave us an advantage or an even playing field with our counterparts.”
Well after college graduation, they still remember those gifts.
“Sometimes you don’t realize the impact of something until years later,” said Cherry Wilmore.
That impact led these sisters, now living in Houma, to create their Laptop of Love campaign in 2020, for foster kids headed to college.
“We want them to have one access to technology because the world is technology. It’s not what’s coming. It’s what’s now,” said Sherry Wilmore.
By the end of this year, 35 laptops and gift baskets will be in the hands of foster kids, like Darion Sneeze, a sophomore at Nicholls.
“This laptop really helped with my work, connecting with me clubs when I’m not able to be there physically,” said Sneeze.
Sneeze says the Laptop of Love campaign gave her a tool she never thought she’d have.
“Laptops are expensive these days and no one really has the money, especially me, to come up with the money to get one,” said Sneeze.
Thanks to a lot of partnerships and support from the community, expense is no longer a barrier.
“It is pure joy,” said Cherry Wilmore. “It is joy and it is overwhelming because so many people help us along the way.”
Connecting foster kids with the academic world is only part of the mission here. The other part happens when they leave college campuses. These sisters hope a laptop can lead to discovering opportunities and choices.
“You have all the choices in the world. This is your life. You have the ability to make the choices,” said Sherry Wilmore. “But what do you do when you don’t know the choice exists?”
Those choices are now right at the fingertips.