PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – Several mothers are being honored Friday night for sticking with a program that helps them prepare and enter parenthood.

Seventy mothers will graduate at a ceremony tonight at the Salvation Army Kroc Center from the Nurse-Family Partnership, a national nonprofit program designed to improve the health and lives of low-income, first time mother and their children.

Nurses from the program visit the expectant mothers every one or two weeks and help them plan for the baby’s arrival, and stay with the same mothers until the children are two-years-old.

Robshebra Pearson, 22, of Olney, had no help when she found herself pregnant and feels she would not have made it without the Partnership.

“Any questions I had, they were always there to answer. They basically prepared me for being a mother before my son got there,” Pearson said.

Pearson’s son is now three-years-old. She is living on her own, enrolled in community college and working full-time.

Reported by Karin Phillips, KYW Newsradio