Jchoice.Org

Our Dining Room is designed to solve short-term hunger needs by providing lunch and dinner each day, 365 days a year. This year, Rosie’s Place will serve approximately 75,000 nutritionally balanced meals to women and their children.

Rosie's Place Groceries is a food pantry that allows 1,250 women each month to take home 20 to 40 pounds of foods home to their families.

The Wellness Center provides an opportunity for women to receive understanding and support along with sound health and medical assistance.

Our advocates schedule 750 appointments each month with guests. Assistance may include housing, health and wellness care, educational and employment opportunities, clothing, legal advice, transportation, and emergency funds for eviction prevention and prescriptions.

Our Homelessness Prevention Outreach program works to break the cycle of chronic homelessness by providing in-home support to guests who are at risk of becoming homeless.

Our Overnight program provides emergency shelter for 20 women and our Permanent Affordable Housing program provides supportive, long-term housing to 23 women in two locations.

The Women’s Education Program provides women with the opportunity to improve their skills and to increase their prospects for employment or further education. We offer English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL), GED preparation, and literacy courses.

The Arts program provides guests with a creative outlet through various workshops and field trips to area museums and galleries.

The Women’s Craft Cooperative is a successful micro-enterprise that offers employment opportunities in a supportive environment for women who face barriers in traditional workplaces.

Our Public Policy program meets two important goals: to advocate at the state level on issues that directly affect our guests, and to involve and empower guests in making change through the political process.

In April 1974, founder Kip Tiernan mobilized a handful of volunteers to provide sandwiches and coffee to our first guests. From the very beginning, Kip worked to help women in a clean, warm and welcoming environment. And as our services have grown and expanded, we continue to believe that Rosie’s Place’s physical space sets the stage to best serve our guests. Whether it is a relaxing chair to sit in while waiting for an advocate, a comfortable room to sleep in for the night or eating off real dishes in our dining room, each space at Rosie’s Place is set up to serve our guests in the most respectful and dignified way imaginable.

Rosie's Place is a sanctuary for poor and homeless women located in the South End of Boston. For 35 years, Rosie’s Place has been dedicated to its mission: to provide a safe and nurturing environment to help poor and homeless women maintain their dignity, seek opportunity and find security in their lives. We constantly assess the changing needs of our guests and work to find the best ways to meet them. Whether a woman requires food, clothing, housing, advocacy, health care, education, or employment, Rosie’s Place is there to help her. All women are welcomed without judgment, treated fairly, and loved unconditionally at Rosie's Place.

In challenging economic times, poor households are significantly hit harder than others, and those who are already at risk of homelessness are put at even greater risk. At Rosie’s Place we are experiencing a dramatic increase in the number of women who are unable to afford rent, nutritious food, or health care. Consider the following:
• Hunger continues to be prevalent in Massachusetts with 522,000 people struggling to put food on the table.
• Massachusetts experienced a 32 percent increase in the number of families in state-supported shelters between November 2007 and November 2008.
• Poor health is closely associated with homelessness. For families struggling to pay the rent, a serious illness or disability can start a downward spiral into homelessness, beginning with a lost job, depletion of savings to pay for care, and eventual eviction.

This year, Rosie’s Place is poised to meet these challenges with confidence and energy. We have carefully tightened our budget without compromising our critical programs and services for those who need it most; poor and homeless women and their children. Since we do not accept government or United Way funding, Rosie’s Place’s programs and services rely solely on the generosity of individuals, foundations, corporations and organizations who believe in our mission.
________________________________________________________________
“Status Report on Hunger in Massachusetts” Project Bread, November 2008.
“Projected Homelessness Increases”, National Alliance to End Homelessness, January 2009.
National Coalition for the Homeless, August 2008.

Some of the most important services we offer our guests are through our Advocacy program. Rosie’s Place’s advocates schedule 750 appointments each month with guests who need services at Rosie’s Place to address a wide variety of issues in their lives. Assistance may include housing, health and wellness care, educational and employment opportunities, clothing, legal advice, transportation, and emergency funds for eviction prevention and prescriptions. Rosie’s Place advocacy services are unlike those of state run agencies. For example, a person who seeks services with the Department of Mental Health may only see their case worker one time per month. And, once their case is opened, they will have a limited number of visits and services for which they can be eligible. At Rosie’s Place, we never cut off services. Women may come to Rosie’s Place as many times as they need to.

Our Overnight program provides emergency shelter on-site for 20 women. While many of the guests in this program come directly from sleeping on the streets, other guests are escaping an abusive relationship or are newly evicted. Guests staying in this program meet with our advocates weekly to work on finding a permanent solution to their housing crises. While most shelters require their guests to leave each morning, our program allows women to stay for three weeks, or more if needed. This approach provides the stability that many of our guests require in order to make sustainable changes in their lives. The demand for this program remains high, serving 600 women each year.

The Food Program at Rosie’s Place is unique. Unlike other emergency food programs, our guests don’t stand in line to get their meal. Instead, our dedicated volunteers and dining room staff act as waiters and waitresses to serve guests restaurant style. By running our dining room in this unique way, we provide our guests with a sense of dignity and a place of respite from their day-to-day struggles. This approach also fosters the dining room as the center of the Rosie’s Place community—a place where women can connect with staff, volunteers, and other guests and begin to find the assistance they need. As part of our strategic plan, the Dining Room will re-fashion its menus over the next three years to deliver meals that include fresh fruits and vegetables, high-fiber foods and low-fat foods. By the end of this timeframe, more than 80% of all meals served in the Dining Room will meet these rigorous standards. Another vital part of our Food Program is Rosie's Place Groceries, a food pantry that allows nearly 1,300 women per month to take home 20 to 40 pounds of foods that their families prefer and enjoy. Food brings people together—especially at Rosie’s Place. Both the Dining Room and the Rosie’s Place Groceries bring our dining room volunteers, guests and staff together, building a sense of security and community so that our guests can connect to important services they need and seek security and opportunity for themselves.

Deidre’s Story

Before she was even 18, Deidre was faced with many obstacles – a teenage pregnancy, a mentally ill mother who suffered from addiction, and a father who passed away suddenly. This didn’t make attending high school an easy feat, and Deidre dropped out just before her senior year. She was then denied public housing twice. But with great perseverance, she tackled her challenges head-on and rose to the occasion.

Deidre first came to Rosie’s Place looking for a fresh start and some solutions. By working with a housing advocate, Deidre went through the appeals process and was finally approved for housing. Even though she now lives in her own place with her two-year-old child, Deidre still says that Rosie’s Place feels like home. And she treats it as such by lending a helping hand in the dining room.

Deidre is also committed to getting an education by attending GED classes and meeting with a private tutor weekly, always doing her homework, and having a can-do attitude. Additionally, Deidre takes advantage of both the clothing and food programs at Rosie’s Place to make sure that she is looking and feeling her best. As one can see, Deidre is utilizing all available resources so that she can lead a healthy lifestyle for herself and her family.

Florence’s Story

Florence left Uganda for America when she was 28 years old. After marrying and then being abandoned by her husband in a new country, she decided to pursue a career as a CNA. Her housing situation soon became dire after a roommate broke the lease, and left Florence with the bill and the hard decision of moving to a more affordable place far from her job. The commute became an unworkable challenge that cost Florence her employment, and eventually her apartment. “Everything was uncertain,” Florence remembers. After going to a local police station for help, Florence was directed to Rosie’s Place.

Seven years later, Florence is working as a human services case worker, counseling people in recovery from mental illness and addiction. She is paying rent for a room in Rosie’s Place permanent housing, and she’s even taking courses towards her Bachelor’s degree at local colleges.

Florence is grateful to Rosie’s Place for helping her along the way. “[My advocate] was instrumental,” Florence explains. “She helped me access resources and made it easy for me to communicate. I had trust issues and was betrayed in the past. Rosie’s Place not only restored my trust; they gave me hope and a new light. It was a rebirth.”

Florence took full advantage of the services at Rosie’s Place, from temporary housing, to the dining room, to working at the Women’s Craft Cooperative and attending trainings on Public Policy, for which she has a strong passion. “I want to influence policy to make things better and give people another chance…I want to be a role model for others.” From what we can see, she already is.

We consider volunteers to be the heart of Rosie’s Place. They make a real difference by improving the quality of the lives of poor and homeless women and our work is made possible because of their willingness to give their time, energy and love.

ABOUT VOLUNTEERING
All kinds of groups volunteer here at Rosie’s Place including corporations, religious organizations, universities, and youth groups. Most help in the dining room with lunch (11am to 1:30pm) and dinner (4pm to 7:30pm) preparing, serving, and cleaning up after meals 7 days a week every day of the year. We can accommodate a maximum of 6 people in a group, but less is also OK. Volunteers must be at least 12 years old.

Individual Volunteering - Individual volunteers are people from the community who commit to helping out on a regular basis. We require a minimum commitment of volunteering twice a month on the same shift for at least 3 months.

ANOTHER OPTION: CATERING
Catering at Rosie’s Place refers to the donation of a nutritious, balanced meal for up to 150 people. Churches, families, neighbors and other groups often find this to be a fun and rewarding way to help others while working together to help in the community. There are a couple different ways groups can cater a meal. Some groups have several members make a dish in their home and then drop it off at Rosie’s Place. Other groups choose to spend an evening at Rosie’s Place preparing a meal with our help in our kitchen. Still others hire a catering organization or restaurant to prepare the meals and then group members help serve it. Each meal typically costs between $250 and $300 and some groups choose to split the cost between group members making it even more manageable. To brainstorm ideas, discuss affordable and nutritional meal options or find out if a specific date is available, please contact Volunteer Services.

ABOUT COLLECTION DRIVES
Collecting items on behalf of Rosie’s Place is another way groups help out. Some items that are really helpful are women's toiletries (especially tooth brushes and toothpaste), non-perishable food as well as adult and children's books. If you are interested in organizing a drive, please let me know and I can forward flyers that your group can reproduce and use to promote your drive. Often groups that are catering or volunteering will conduct a drive prior to their visit and then bring their donations with them when they come to volunteer. The women of Rosie's Place really enjoy these items that they may not receive without your help.