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Helping women help themselves

Mary's House, a ministry that already provides temporary assistance, is planning a shelter for women and their children.

By DAN DEWITT
Published January 4, 2007

BROOKSVILLE - Three years ago, Cheryl Hart's marriage of 20 years broke up, leaving her with three children, no money, no job - and no home.

She was forced to move in with her parents. Without a car, she walked to the first job she could find, seasonal work preparing taxes. When that ended, she walked throughout Spring Hill looking for a permanent job.

She finally found it after volunteering at the thrift store run by Jericho Road Ministries Inc., where she is now stewardship director. So she knows firsthand the need for the organization's newest project: a shelter for women and, eventually, their families.

Knowing help is available, she said, could give women the strength to resist temptations that make their problems worse.

"The streets would not be so enticing. The drugs would not be so enticing."

Jericho Road has planned to build a women's shelter since 2000, when it opened a facility in Brooksville for homeless men. But the effort gained momentum last year, when Pat Augustyniak and Mary Cody joined the organization.

Both have worked since 2004 as literacy volunteers with women at the Hernando County Jail.

And both, Augustyniak said, had seen "so many women who were not hardened criminals but had gotten into bad habits that put them in jeopardy."

Without support, she said, they had little choice but to go back to the surroundings where they originally had found trouble.

"They really had a desire to be whole women and upstanding members of the community, and there was nowhere for them to go in Hernando County," she said.

Working through Jericho Road, the two of them have been able to start helping these women. Last year, through the organization's fledgling ministry, Mary's House, they provided temporary, emergency accommodations at motels for 111 women and 161 children.

Jericho Road's plans for Mary's House are much more ambitious though. They hope to provide a full range of support for women who not only need shelter, but need help starting a new life, said Rev. Bruce W. Gimbel, executive director of Jericho Road Ministries

The Christian-based program will be similar to the one offered at the men's shelter, where residents stay for nine months. They might get counseling for substance abuse and anger management, coaching on how to apply for and retain jobs or tutoring to earn a high school equivalence certificate.

It would be open to women who recently have been released from the jail, to women abandoned by husbands or boyfriends, to pregnant teenagers and to young women who do not have the support of family members.

It would not serve women who have been physically abused, Augustyniak said, because the Dawn Center of Hernando County does.

Ultimately, Jericho Road would like to build a 50-bed shelter for men and another one for women and their families.

In the short term, organizers are hoping for a large donation to build a men's shelter on the organization's property on Wiscon Road. Gimbel estimates this would cost about $500,000.

The group would then turn the current men's facility on Mondon Hill Road over to single women. Failing that, the group is seeking a donation of money or property to allow it to open a small shelter in an existing house.

Augustyniak said the effort might start with just a day center equipped with phones and computers - a sanctuary to allow women to apply for work and volunteers to help them do it.

Though Hart did not need help avoiding substance abuse - as most of the program's clients probably will, Gimbel said - she shared enough of the other problems to know how welcome any help will be.

That is especially true, Hart said, because of the great increase in recent years of the cost of renting or buying a home.

Without a place of your own, she said, "you don't know where you can go for help, and that's what Mary's House wants to provide. We want to provide courses so we can teach them on how to help themselves."

Dan DeWitt can be reached at dewitt@sptimes.com or 352754-6116.

[Last modified January 3, 2007, 21:29:57]