In Franklin County, Tykayla Livingston is known not by a title, but by the work she does: raising three children, serving families through early childhood education, and advocating for youth in her community.

By the time Livingston gets her paycheck, she knows where every dollar is going: to rent, childcare, gas, or school supplies. At 27, Livingston is a single mom of three kids—ages 5, 6, and 8—who works in early childhood education, advocates for youth, and carefully stretches every paycheck to keep her family stable. 

Her family uses Medicaid and SNAP benefits to stay healthy, keep food on the table, and make it possible for Livingston to keep working and parenting. Medicaid is especially important to her family because Livingston’s middle child has Dysruptive Mood Deregulation Disorder (DMDD) and needs medication to help him regulate his mood and behavior. Medicaid helps cover the medication her middle child needs, reducing crises at school and allowing Livingston to stay focused on work and caregiving.

“I’m originally from Centerville in Franklin County, a really small, small little country town,” Livingston said, describing a place with just two stores and a Dollar General. In rural communities like Centerville, nearly one in four residents relies on Medicaid, and the program covers about one in five rural hospital stays, making it a backbone of care in places where options are already limited.

When the federal government cut SNAP benefits in November, 2025, Livingston had to decide what other necessity she wouldn’t pay for. “So I have three boys, and they eat a lot,” she said. Feeding them meant deciding whether to put gas in the car so she could go to work or keeping the lights on.” Those choices didn’t just affect her household, they made it harder for her to get to work consistently and keep her family on steady footing.

“It creates obstacles for working families, because we’re already living paycheck to paycheck,” she said of the lapse in SNAP benefits. “Before we even get our paycheck, it’s already designated to a bill.”  For Livingston, those obstacles showed up as missed work hours, mounting stress, and fewer options when her child needed extra care. If she misses days at her job in early childhood education, it also affects her employer and the families they serve.

At the same time, her middle son was adjusting to medication, leading to behavior problems at school that pulled her away from work and made an already tight balance even harder to maintain. 

Even while navigating daily trade-offs around food, health care, and childcare, Livingston keeps her focus on the long term. She draws on her own experience, learning to navigate the world after her mother died in Livingston’s teens, to inform a deep belief in the power of young people as capable changemakers.

Deep in the trenches of work and parenting responsibilities, Livingston keeps working toward her ambitious goals and advocating for youth. “How old do you have to be to change the world?” she asks on social media and public appearances.

Livingston is a poetic speaker and a local campaign manager. She is working on her associate’s degree and has plans to start a charter school next year, utilizing inquiry-based curriculum and multi-aged classrooms. “My educational philosophy for the school is ‘Children teach children guided by you,’” Livingston said. “I really believe that children have the ability to do things themselves, and it’s crucial to have inquiry-based education curriculum, because they need to know how to do something instead of knowing what to do.”

It’s easier to think about the future when her family has the stability to plan beyond the next bill.

In Livingston’s home of Franklin County, “you” can mean the whole community. “I can send my children off with their aunt to a football game, and I get a call from a person down the street, like, ‘I saw your kids with their auntie, and the auntie had to tell them to sit down and be quiet.’ There’s nothing around that you’re not gonna know in this community. Everybody loves one another. Everybody knows one another.”

In 2028, she plans to run for Franklin County School Board, with her eyes on a future seat in the North Carolina General Assembly. “I am very, very, very passionate about education,” she said. “I’m very, very passionate about youth. I do whatever it takes or necessary for me to get there.”

For Livingston, programs like Medicaid and SNAP aren’t about getting by, they’re about giving working families the stability they need to raise kids, stay involved, and build something better for the communities they love.