Maggie's Place
Maggie’s Place is a women’s home for expectant mothers and their newborns. Maggie’s Place has 3 locations in the Phoenix area and 1 location in Ohio. We are brand new partners with Maggie’s Place this month and would love to share with you how they are impacting the local community by bringing HOPE to one mom at a time!
1) In a few sentences explain what Maggie’s Place is.
Maggie’s Place is a community that provides homes to pregnant women who are alone or on the streets. We provide for the immediate needs of the moms (clothes, food, and safety) in the context of a home and a supportive community. In addition, we help the moms get connected to prenatal care, education, employment, counseling, dental care, and lots of other opportunities to help them meet their goals.
Opening 10 years ago, it’s been a wild ride, beginning with a brainstorming session of friends and growing into a thriving, expanding organization that has served over 400 women and their children! What an adventure!
Maggie’s Place is kicking off a new project by creating an Alumnae Outreach and Training Center in Central Phoenix. Since many of our mothers are parenting alone, we continue to support and build relationships with them even after they have moved out of our homes. Via various activities and support, the alumnae moms continue to experience the strength of community and friendship as well as receive practical assistance from Maggie’s Place.
Mitchell Swaback Charities has stepped forward as a partner in the renovation of the new property—and we are SO blessed by their involvement! While the structure is sound, the new home needs a bit of “tender loving care”—we are so grateful to have new friends helping us in this process!
2) What impact is Maggie’s Place making in the local community?
By God’s design, pregnancy is meant to be lived out in the context of family. For many complicated reasons, the mothers who join the Maggie’s Place community are facing pregnancy alone. Our ministry walks beside the mothers to honor their motherhood and the gift of their child. In this way, we are a witness that life is a gift to be cherished! On a practical level, the support that Maggie’s Place provides ensures that the child gets a strong start. Prenatal care, a safe environment, emotional support, nutritious food, therapeutic counseling.
3) How have you seen growth in Maggie’s Place?
Maggie’s Place has known tremendous growth. We started by fixing up an abandoned property in downtown Phoenix and welcoming five women. Now we have four full homes and the capacity to serve 32 women at one time. Plus, we continue to have outreach programs for the over 400 women who have lived in one of our homes.
4) What was the driving force behind Maggie’s Place?
As a community, Maggie's Place has many reasons to remain steadfast in hope. We regularly witness the gift of new life, an experience that sings of hope for the future. We observe women making progress, in both tiny and enormous ways, toward their goals, and we are filled with hope by the choices that we see them make. And we continuously fall back on the Christian principle of hoping in a merciful God to be with us on the journey.
5) What does the future hold for Maggie’s Place…short term and long term future…?
The Christian journey is an adventure of trying to see where love is most needed and responding in the appropriate way. When we think about our work in this context, the future is a bit of a mystery. Without a doubt, our mission is caught up in the care of women and children during a vulnerable time, but how that mission will continue to unfold is to be determined.
6) What impact for the Lord has Maggie’s Place made collectively or on an individual basis?
Our life at Maggie's Place, just like the life of all, is filled with glorious moments and profoundly difficult moments. The last ten years have been jam-packed with life experiences—birth and death, celebration and grieving, thriving and struggling. We have cheered at the graduation of moms and celebrated their significant milestones in sobriety. We have also felt defeated by a mom who makes a string of bad choices and is asked to leave our community. We have rejoiced as new homes were opened and grieved as we cleaned out a home badly damaged by fire. It is our day-to-day life—in its joys and messiness—where Christ comes to meet us!
We daily pray, “Divine Providence can provide; Divine Providence did provide; Divine Providence will provide.” In this small prayer, our community remembers with our intellect and our experience that God takes care of our needs. The prayer ends with the assertion that we can continue to trust in His tender care. In sharing a life with His beloved little ones, we feel the nudge of his Fatherly love on a regular basis. How blessed we are!
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