By: Eden Collier When eleven students from St. Francis High School decided to band together to make a difference, we didn’t realize how much the experience would change us.
Read MoreZenn for Good
It truly takes a village to do what we do here at Saint John’s Program for Real Change. Behind the red doors at Saint John’s is an exceptional group of community supporters, donors, volunteers, and staff united in an effort to reduce homelessness in our community. These incredible partners support women who refuse to settle…
Read MoreRebuilding my Family
After the death of her mother, Natisha was overwhelmed with stress. She began experimenting with drugs and settled on meth to mask the pain. Over the course of her 10-year addiction, she lost her job and her apartment and was living in a tent by the river with two of her three children, Daeveon (8)…
Read MorePiece by Piece
One of the challenges of memorializing the life of a Saint John’s graduate is how to capture the real story. These women have come from places and pasts so drastically different from our own, and yet, they are more full of hope and happiness than most anyone you have ever met. That’s what makes their…
Read MoreBeyond My Wildest Dreams
Suffering verbal, mental and physical abuse by her boyfriend, Carmen became severely depressed and turned to meth to self-medicate. Her life had spiraled out of control, as she alternately lived on the streets and couch-surfed, resulting in CPS removing five-year-old daughter Olivia (now 10) from her custody and placing her in foster care. Olivia was…
Read MoreBeginning to Know Myself
I met Jennifer after she had finished a shift managing some of the other ladies working in the residential campus kitchen…..hot and tired, she had an air of calm confidence that impressed me immediately. Here was a smart lady who, at 42, finally knew what she had to do to move forward in her life….
Read MoreFinally Felicia
When Felicia underwent gastric bypass surgery in 2006, little did she know that this procedure would produce the opposite result for which it was intended: instead of leading to improved health, it resulted in an addiction to opioids. When she could no longer get her hands on pain meds, she turned to meth, and from…
Read MoreShe is Risen
Resurrection, rebirth, renewal are all words we will hear a lot this week, but these are words that we live by, every day, at Saint John’s. When women and children arrive at our doors, the joy and exuberance that is life is missing from their eyes, from their faces, from their souls. They are broken,…
Read MoreStephanie’s Serendipity
As a single mother of three, living paycheck-to-paycheck was a way of life. Stephanie became the sole parent of her family in 2014, when her husband was sentenced to 27 years to life in prison for beating her. For years, the beatings had gone unreported, as he repeatedly threatened to kill her and their son…
Read MoreSandy’s Salvation
What kind of mother uses while she’s pregnant? What kind of mother would continue to use, knowing she had four babies already removed from her care by “the system?” Looking back at a life I can no longer fathom, I am forever grateful for the Real Change I have finally been able to achieve. At…
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