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Seybou Anza and Brigitte Mboumba Maganga of West Street got married Wednesday in a brief, elegant ceremony at the New Castle County clerk of the peace office.
Their reason, the bride said, was simple: "Because we love each other."
Anza, who came to Wilmington from Niger about five years ago, works for a medical services company. Mboumba Maganga, who braids hair, came from Gabon three years ago. During the ceremony, they pledged fidelity to each other for a lifetime.
"We both came from two-parent homes, so this marriage for us is a continuation of that," Maganga said. "Marriage is very important to us."
Marriage also is important to two brothers who run a human-services nonprofit in the city and believe that more successful marriages would make Wilmington -- where a recent report found that half of all households are run by single mothers -- a better place.
Sheldon and Theophilus Nix Jr. of Professional Counseling Resources Inc. recently secured a $1.25 million grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to promote responsible fatherhood and healthy marriages by teaching relationship skills to married couples, hoping to make sure happy unions like Anza and Mboumba Maganga's last a lifetime.
Married couples tend to be happier, make more money and provide a more stable home to their children than their single peers, the brothers said.
The federal grant will help 1,000 Wilmington couples during the next five years by providing 10 free sessions of training and counseling at the Kingswood Community Center in northeast Wilmington and Peoples Settlement on the East Side.
"The situation in northeast Wilmington, with so many fragmented families, is bleak," said Bernadette Winston, who runs the Kingswood center. "There is a man somewhere in the picture, because there are still babies being born. They need to learn that there's more to being a father than stopping by once in a while and dropping off a few dollars."
Winston said 95 percent of the families the center serves are run by single parents, mostly women. Keith Lake, who heads Peoples Settlement, said 92 percent of the families that use his center's services fall into the same category.
To try to reduce those numbers, the program will seek couples who are married, engaged or interested in getting married, and try to give them the skills to stay together, said psychologist Randolph Walters, a professor at Eastern University in suburban Philadelphia, who will be conducting some of the sessions. Those skills include communication, managing conflict, financial management and enhancing emotional intimacy.
Lake said he hopes some estranged couples might try to reunite. "We'd like to get the fathers back involved," he said. "Without them, it's very difficult for the mothers, on a day-to-day basis, to make ends meet."
The sessions will include about a dozen couples each, Walters said. Couples who are deeply troubled could receive intensive sessions on their own.
Professional Counseling Resources has obtained more than $5.2 million in federal grants for groups in the region in the past four years. Last year, the group got $1.8 million that is allowing the Wilmington PAL Center and several churches to try to convince hundreds of adolescents that they should abstain from sex until they are married.
Sheldon Nix, who is also a psychologist and a minister, says the marriage-skills course is based on the idea that at-risk children will benefit. It's a better lifestyle for the adults, too.
"Marriage is a good thing," he said. "Marriage can be sustained and truly satisfying."
Nix said healthy relationships require the right skills.
"When most couples go to counseling, it's almost too late," he said. "It's a lot easier to teach the skills of marriage before they get to that point."
Nix said the program is particularly critical for Wilmington, where factors that strain marriages -- such as poverty, unemployment and drug and alcohol abuse -- abound.
George and Darriel Robinson of Washington Street, who got married by New Castle County Deputy Clerk of the Peace Tom Coviello immediately after Anza and Mboumba Maganga, said the new program is a great idea. After getting premarital counseling from a local church, they decided they weren't ready for a lifetime commitment and separated for three months before getting re-engaged.
Now, the couple said, they're ready to begin raising a family.
"Marriage counseling is a good thing, especially before someone gets married," Darriel said. "It's not going to be right for the children unless it's a two-parent home."
Mayor James M. Baker said he hopes the program helps but said it will be an uphill battle.
"Any attempt to try to help restore some normalcy to people as it relates to the meaning of fatherhood would be great," he said. "The only problem is, how do you reach them? It's very hard to do if they don't see themselves ever getting married, which is how a lot of people feel in this day and age."
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