Women Alive!
We are committed to women living on the streets. The primary objective of our program is to create a safe, non-judgmental, nurturing space for women beginning with an emergency overnight shelter. Currently, Women Alive! is the only emergency walk-in shelter for street women in Monterey County.
The Women Alive! Program is located in Dorothy's Place Hospitality Center, in the Dayroom area. Every day, the Dayroom closes at 2:00 p.m. for cleaning and transformation into the Women Alive! shelter. Homeless women may enter from 7:00-8:30 every night and stay until 6:30 in the morning. With a capacity of 16 beds per night, we have been open every night since December 2005 and have served 113 different women (as of July 2007). Of those women:
• 30 have been referred to behavioral health services
• 23 have been referred to substance abuse treatment services
• 24 have been referred to housing services
• 11 have been employed
• all have enjoyed a safe night’s sleep, a hot meal, a hot shower and laundry services
The women who come to the shelter have opportunities to share nutritious meals, safe sleeping space, arts and crafts, peer counseling, games, movies, field trips, conversations and dreams! We take regular field trips, with the most recent favorites being a trip to Santa Cruz and to a performance of the Vagina Monologues. We hold monthly meetings with guests, staff and volunteers to plan for trips, discuss details of operations and to do small trust building activities. The real beauty and gift of the shelter, though, is the daily re-discovery of family and place.
The community of Women Alive! has led nearly all of the women to begin volunteering at Dorothy's Place. Some have been able to get jobs in Women Alive! and other programs. (An alarming number of our guests are elderly, disabled or both, and therefore do not often seek employment opportunities.) Some others have gotten rooms or apartments and are speaking of returning to school – and, of course, coming into Dorothy's Place to volunteer when possible.
Another exciting endeavor that is new this year is the Peter Maurin Work Co-op. This started as an art project during the Women Alive! shelter hours and has grown to a small silk screening micro-enterprise. Women volunteers and guests from the shelter planned and are running an operation making screen printed t-shirts and canvas bags with custom designs that we then sell at different community venues. We do most of the work during the day and this provides a small income for participants (based on sales) and income to feed the expansion of the operation. The Work Co-op is gaining momentum as a regular vendor at the Oldtown Salinas Marketplace, several local festivals and fairs and through completion of several large special orders.
To be homeless is first a reality of aloneness, the hunger for community and the gift of relationship with another. This soul-hunger exists on many different levels, and each level must be embraced with hope and possibility before enduring growth can occur. It is a blessing to witness distraught women receive the chance for a safe deep breath. And then to see the smiles slowly come to their faces, along with the slow dawning realization that they are no longer alone.
The simple gifts brought to everyone because of opening our doors for women at night constantly amaze us. "To be an instrument of peace" is good!
How You Can Help!
Financially, it has been very, very challenging to keep Women Alive! open every night. We are blessed to have grants from United Way Monterey County, The Sister Fund, The Harden Foundation and the Lautaret Family Trust to keep us going, but most of our resources come from individual donors.
We encourage anyone interested in providing financial support, in-kind donations or volunteer time to come visit the program. Feel free to drop in, or contact us first so we can make time to give you our full attention.
• Financial donations (we really need to add a full-time advocate position to help our guests with placement in treatment, housing, and jobs)
• Volunteers to cook dinner
• Volunteers and professionals who can share time and services such as counselors, beauticians, massage therapists, and good listeners!
• Donate supplies
• Underwear, sweat suits, socks
• Blow-up mattresses, sleeping bags
• Shampoo, soap, deodorant
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