HIGH POINT, N.C. — Two women are using their challenging life experiences to motivate and help others in the community.

Latameria Davis and Jasmine Hoyle are co-owners of Harvest Focused and co-presidents of The Ultimate Sacrifice. Harvest Focused provides mental health services, as well as personal and professional development opportunities.

The Ultimate Sacrifice provides community outreach and peer support. Together, the groups help community members find mental health counseling, housing, transportation, and many other resources.

Both Davis and Hoyle experienced life-changing events through their childhood and into adulthood. Davis was sexually assaulted as a child. By the time she was 15 years old, she was homeless, addicted to drugs, and struggling to survive.

“I was introduced to people who started dealing drugs," Davis says. "I started using cocaine. I started stripping. I was homeless. I didn’t have anywhere to go.”

Hoyle lost her mother at the age of 14. She entered the foster care system but eventually aged out.

"I just knew my life would never be the same. Before that I was a rough teen, because I was angry at the fact that we were poor,” she says.

Despite her low grades in high school and a rocky home life, Hoyle applied to college and received a full-ride scholarship to Fayetteville State University.

In 2017, tragedy struck both women again. Davis and her children came home to find her husband’s body. She later found out he died of an accidental overdose of fentanyl.

“I want to make sure no other wife or children have to experience what we just experienced,” Davis says.

Hoyle’s sister died of an aneurysm, which is the same way her mother died years before.

“I look at her life, and I would never want another woman, another person, to die with so many dreams, with so many talents inside of them,” she says. 

Their struggles inspired them to create change. Hoyle began working on The Ultimate Sacrifice. Davis began creating Harvest Focused. Three years later, both organizations are working together with five locations through High Point and Burlington.

“Together, we were like ‘why don’t we team up and be the lean-on for others in the community, to support these people and show them not only a way to survive, but a way to conquer,'” Davis says.

Both women and their team wanted to give back in a monumental way this holiday season. The Ultimate Giveaway served more than 100 families across the Triad. They gave away bags of food, giftcards, children’s toys, and coats at a block-party style event. Nyshekia Bradsher, a mother to seven children, was thankful to get some help during this difficult year.

“It was kind of hard this Christmas, you know. When she said that they were handing out toys and giving gifts and different things, I said well we need to go,” Bradsher says. 

The Ultimate Sacrifice and Harvest Focused recently gave away eight cars to mothers in need of transportation. They also surprised Walmart shoppers by paying for their items in the checkout line.

Davis and Hoyle lead the largest mental health service provider in the state with more than 500 clients. They plan to expand their organizations in 2021.