SPRING 2025 Providing Sanctuary, Providing Family Q & A with Our Director of Research & Evaluation Coming Back and Giving Back Our President on Growing to Meet Growing Needs
NEWS
Q&A
JASON ERCOLANO
DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH & EVALUATION In 2022, Jason Ercolano filled a new position at Rosie’s Place, Director of Research and Evaluation. He brings over 30 years of program management and evaluation experience in social service organizations to his work collecting data, building evaluation tools and measuring impact so that we can best serve our guests. Yours is a newer role at Rosie’s Place. How does it connect with other longstanding programs and services? Meeting our guests’ often complicated needs, is what my colleagues working in direct service programs do, every day at Rosie’s Place. That has always and will always come first for them. So, my role is to actively observe their work. To measure, quantify and extract all kinds of data points from their work and then assemble it to tell a story. What kind of data do you collect? One example is in our Dining Room. We count how many meals we serve each day but we also look for trends, patterns and outliers. Is lunch or dinner busier on certain days or in certain months than others and if so, why? This helps us to better plan for potential surges in need. We also seek our guests’ opinions and experiences directly. When a woman starts her stay in our Overnight Shelter, we ask her to fill out a survey that asks her everything from how she learned about Rosie’s Place to what she wants our help with while she’s staying with us. At the close of her stay, we will ask for her feedback on her experience and how we can continue to support her. We never want to ask our guests questions that are unnecessary to serving them or collect data that is disruptive or intrusive. We will never ask more questions of our guests than we need to. Our sole focus is on collecting data that will inform and improve how we serve our community. Have you noticed any trends in our data? Growth! From food assistance to help with rent and utilities, the need for our help continues to grow. Thankfully, with our new Strategic Plan, Rosie’s Place is continuing to expand and increase our services to meet our guests’ growing needs. (See our chart on page 2 to see our growth.) What’s a favorite part of your job? The people I get to work with! My colleagues are so passionate about their work. I love that I feel like an honorary member of each department, because we are always collaborating to make Rosie’s Place the best place it can be for our guests.
Team Rosie’s Place Runs the Boston Marathon Extending Welcome and Support to Immigrants Safe & Sound Gala on May 7th
Providing Sanctuary, Providing Family
Growing up, Nina never knew what to expect each time she came home. Her childhood was marked by chaos and dysfunction. As she got older, one thing she did know for certain was that she couldn’t depend on her family for the support she needed. She left home as soon as she graduated high school and spent years spiraling in and out of deep depression and homelessness, pinballing between couch surfing with friends and living on the streets when that wasn’t an option. Eventually, Nina got an office job, an apartment she shared with roommates and connected to the mental health supports she’d long needed. For a few years, her life was routine and steady, just as she had always wanted.
Even once Luisa’s health was stabilized and Nina got all her shifts back at work—the bills continued snowballing. Nina could never catch up. And then her landlord began threatening eviction. Afraid they could be homeless, she felt out of both options and hope when a coworker told her about Rosie’s Place.
Nina called our Advocacy Helpline and came in with Luisa the next day to meet with one of our Advocates. We were able to help mother and daughter with their back rent and utility arrears and remain stable in their home with our eviction prevention funding. As Nina said, “Once I spoke with an Advocate and learned that Rosie’s Place could help me, I felt like a tremendous weight had been lifted. It was like I had been holding my breath for so long and now I Then she got married and a couple of years later, gave birth could finally breathe.” to her daughter Luisa. For a while, Nina worked to make her family the one she had always wanted. But unfortunately, With day-to-day management, Luisa’s diabetes is under the turmoil she was all too familiar with returned when her control, and she is a very active and inquisitive kindergartener. husband became abusive. She fled with Luisa and moved to Nina is waitressing full-time and also working with our Massachusetts hoping to put a safe distance between them. Employment Specialist to find a job with better hours and benefits. She keeps her mental health stable by regularly With the little savings she had, Nina was able to get her and connecting with our Behavioral Health Program’s team and her daughter set up in a new apartment in Boston. Nina the staff of our Wellness Center. Nina and Luisa often enjoy found a waitressing job. Luisa started pre-school, and over dinners in our Dining Room and rely on groceries from our time, the mother and daughter found their footing in the new Food Pantry to stretch their monthly budget. city. But once more, this stability was short-lived. Nina found consistency, family and sanctuary at Rosie’s When Luisa became seriously sick with what was later Place. As she says, “Every time I come in, I know I’ll be diagnosed as juvenile diabetes, Nina, with no family or welcomed. During some of the hardest days of my life, they friends to turn to for support, stayed home to take care of were there for me. For some people, they have family that her. As a result, she lost too many shifts at work and the bills they can count on. Lusia and I have Rosie’s Place, and I began to pile up. And Nina’s anxiety increased. couldn’t be more grateful.”
Coming Back and Giving Back Almost fifteen years ago, Monique Johnson was a student at Roxbury Community College, struggling to keep up with the high expenses that pursuing higher education meant for her. When a classmate told her that she had found help at Rosie’s Place, Monique reached out to our Women’s Education Center. We were able to assist Monique with funding to cover textbooks for the year. As she says, “this helped me tremendously.” While Monique went on to graduate from Roxbury Community College and then UMASS Boston with a BA in Psychology, she never forgot about Rosie’s Place. She recently returned to volunteer in our Dining Room to return the kindness she received. A working mother of three with plans to pursue an MA in Psychology in the near future, Monique carves out time to come in and help our staff prepare and serve lunch in our Dining Room each month.
Says Monique of being back at Rosie’s Place, “It’s just a good feeling. I like the atmosphere here. I really enjoy the time I spend at Rosie’s Place, and it always goes by so fast!” Our Dining Room is open 365 days a year, with breakfast, lunch and dinner offered onsite or to-go. Last year alone, we served 152,000 nutritious and culturally inclusive meals, a 47% increase from the year before, and an average of more than 400 meals a day. Learn more about volunteering in our Dining Room and our host of individual and group, on-site and virtual volunteer opportunities at rosiesplace.org/get-involved.