Rosie's Place Fall 2022 Newsletter

NEWS

Q&A

ORIALIS MAXWELL SENIOR DIRECTOR OF EMERGENCY SERVICES

What kinds of help does Rosie’s Place provide through our Emergency Services?

We provide basic survival needs such as showers and phone or computer use at our Front Desk. Our Dining Room serves delicious breakfasts, lunches and dinners 365 days of the year. With the staggering increase in food insecurity, our Food Pantry is now providing groceries to more women than ever. And every night, the 20 beds in our Overnight Shelter are full.

How do these services tie in with other programs at Rosie’s Place?

All of our help is connected. Because we know that if a woman needs one of our Emergency Services, she likely could benefit from other help. For example, a woman who is joining us for meals in the Dining Room may need help with housing. And a woman staying in our Overnight Shelter may need help with securing a job or workforce training.

My first role at Rosie’s Place was at the Front Desk. That’s where I learned so much about our mission and our guests. Our Front Desk is usually where the first and most important contacts are made. It’s our Front Desk staff who answer our door, answer the phone and welcome women. And they don’t just give directions or forward calls. They listen with compassion and patience to women who are in crisis, anxious and afraid. They tell each woman how we can help, who to talk to or where to go to get the support they need. Our Front Desk is really the hub of Rosie’s Place. And by kindly listening and directing guests to appropriate services, our staff address a spectrum of our guests’ basic and complex needs, every day.

What has changed about our Emergency Services over the years?

As the pandemic forced us to rethink how our programs run, much of our day-to-day service delivery and protocols have changed and evolved. But overall, the biggest change I’ve seen in recent years is the stunning need for our Food Pantry. Our Emergency Services are almost always working at capacity but when we saw the line of women for our Food Pantry stretching down the street, we knew that we had to change. We are now providing groceries to more than 1,750 households every week.

Women start lining up an hour or more before our Pantry opens at 9:00am. Every woman who comes to our Pantry window is given the groceries she came for and she’s also asked what else she or her family may need help with. She’s asked if she knows about all our other programs. We are always asking how we can be of more help.

Introducing a New Holiday Card

Join Us for Funny Women…Serious Business, November 15th

Making a Difference, Making Family

When we met Irene, she was newly homeless and distraught that she had nowhere to go. She is one of many senior citizens who has visited Rosie’s Place for support this year.

Originally from Georgia, Irene had been providing in-home care for her sister until she passed away. Grieving, she came up to Boston to join her daughter, son-in-law and two granddaughters in their small twobedroom apartment. It was tight, but Irene loved being around to cook meals and help with her grandkids. Unfortunately, when the landlord learned she was staying there, he wanted more in rent for an additional tenant and threatened eviction.

Unable to pay, Irene had no choice but to leave, and a kind neighbor let her stay on her couch while she looked for another solution. But there wasn’t one, and after two weeks she made her way to our door, exhausted and worried she would end up on the street.

Our Front Desk staff quickly comforted Irene and asked what she needed. They invited her to rest in our Sitting Room until it was time for lunch and put her name on the list for a bed in our Overnight Shelter. Irene joined us for a meal, and thankfully, we had an available bed and a dresser for her things.

Quiet and anxious about being in a shelter for the first time, she teared up during the tour when we provided her with a welcome kit and new pajamas asking, “You mean these are mine?”

By her second week with us, Irene seemed more relaxed. She began engaging with staff and others staying in the shelter. She met with an Advocate to find out how to apply for benefits and connected with our Housing Search team to start working toward a place of her own. When we learned Irene had an opportunity for senior housing, we extended her stay beyond the typical 21 days. Irene spent two months with us before she was able to move into her new apartment.

On the day of her move, her daughter and grandchildren came to Rosie’s Place, and with great pride, Irene showed them where she had stayed and introduced them to the Advocates who had helped her. Irene said, “Rosie’s Place is now my family too and I can always get help here if I need it.”

In fact, soon after Irene was settled at her new place, she reached out to our Employment Specialist to look for parttime work. Just as she had cared for her sister, she wants to do in-home care but still be available to help with her

grandchildren in the afternoons. Irene also has weekly check-ins with one of our Housing Stabilization Advocates who comes by with groceries and to help her stay on track with her budget and expenses.

Irene appreciates this connection. And so do we. We want her to know she can always count on us. After all, we are family.

Emergency Services at Rosie’s Place

Just like Irene did, thousands of women every year find security, respite and a sense of dignity in some of our most basic services provided by our friendly Front Desk staff. For so many guests, taking a shower, safeguarding their belongings, washing a load of laundry or spending time safe and undisturbed in our Sitting Room are great comforts. We also provide guests with important lifelines like a mailing address, access to a computer and use of a phone.

Poor and homeless women spend their days figuring out how they will afford their rent or where they will sleep at night. Nights are spent worrying about safety, food and the next day. Our 20-bed Overnight Shelter affords each guest a 21-night stay, allowing her to unpack, exhale and connect to all that Rosie’s Place offers, with the goal of beginning a forward-facing plan toward long-term stability.

The Dining Room is the heart of Rosie’s Place, where women come for nourishment, friendship and community. Poor women often scrimp to save money at the expense of nutrition. Our kitchen prepares wholesome, healthy and culturally inclusive, sitdown and take-to-go meals 365 day a year, served in a cheerful environment.

Responding to soaring food insecurity in Massachusetts, our Food Pantry has now tripled its pre-pandemic capacity, providing fresh fruits and vegetables, dairy, various proteins, shelf-stable items, household goods, toiletries, masks and COVID tests to 350 women and their families a day.

Making a Difference, Making Family Q & A with Our Senior Director of Emergency Services

Our President on Compassion, Connection & Community

Orialis Maxwell has been with Rosie’s Place since 2014, and in that time, she has worked in almost all our Emergency Services programs. Since 2020, Orialis has been bringing her breadth of experience and expertise to leading the Emergency Services teams.

Our President on the Emergency Needs of Compassion, Connection and Community

Dear Friend,

Since Rosie’s Place’s first day, when we opened our doors and invited women to join us for coffee and sandwiches, we’ve always known that food builds community. It brings people together—especially at Rosie’s Place.

So that today, when we see the line for our Pantry stretching down the block and around the corner, and the tables in our Dining Room so full that some meals require two seatings—we don’t only see the great need, but we also see the great opportunities to make important connections.

We realize that our Emergency Services don’t offer longterm solutions to our guests’ poverty or homelessness. But we recognize that they are an important start.

Because, as Irene’s story and our conversation with Orialis Maxwell on page one illustrate, when women learn they can count on us for welcome and kindness, for vital food and shelter and showers, they soon discover we can help them with much more.

Connecting with our guests and connecting our guests to what they need is what Rosie’s Place is all about.

This could mean asking a woman lingering over a meal in the Dining Room if she has a safe place to stay, distributing flyers for our Women’s Education Center’s ESOL and Technology classes in our Pantry’s food bags or putting guests in our Overnight Shelter or our Sitting Room in touch with our Advocate or Housing, Legal, Mental Health and Employment Specialists.

Every day, women like Mona can be found in our Dining Room. Disabled and living on a fixed income, she relies on Rosie’s Place for help stretching her budget. With each visit, she looks forward to seeing friends and she also stops in at our Wellness Center for a blood sugar check. And on Fridays, she makes sure to check out what movie is playing in the Sitting Room.

And women like Chelsea, a single mother of two who is working with our Employment Specialist to secure a new job after being laid off from her job at a call center, depend on our Food Pantry—every week—for groceries, masks and COVID tests.

We aim to alleviate suffering in immediate ways and in doing so, create opportunities for connection and further help. In this way, we are able to make a real difference for women like Mona, Chelsea and the thousands of women who turn to us each year.

Thank you for sharing our belief that compassion, connection and community are the most urgent and important needs for all of us.

With appreciation,

ROSIE’S PLACE NEWS is published three times a year to inform our friends about activities and events taking place throughout the Rosie’s Place community.

OUR MISSION is to provide a safe and nurturing environment to help poor and homeless women to maintain their dignity, seek opportunity, and find security in their lives.

OUR VISION is based on the words of our founder, Kip Tiernan: “Never forget that charity is scraps from the table and justice is a seat at the table. Charity is giving to others what belongs to you. Justice is giving others what belongs to them.”

At Rosie’s Place, we believe diversity, equity and inclusion are core components of justice. We commit to acting on a daily basis to dismantle injustice to ensure that opportunities and equitable outcomes are available to all members of our community regardless of individual characteristics including race, color, religion, national origin, gender, gender identity, age, sexual orientation or perceived ability.

We’d love to hear from you! Please contact us with your comments at jdoyle@rosiesplace.org or 617.318.0265.

QUOTABLE

With food costs skyrocketing and inflation impacting all areas of life, access to fresh, nutritious food is becoming even more difficult for many of our guests. Food purchased at www.yougivegoods.com/rosiesplace2022 gets delivered right to our front door and distributed through our Food Pantry.

Will you consider adding a few items to your weekly grocery list for Rosie’s Place?

“We want to thank you for the opportunity to serve at Rosie’s Place. It was a fantastic way to give back to the community and serve others. It is truly amazing what you all do every day, and we were glad to be a part of it for a day…”

A kind note from our friends at Xaverian Brothers High School who volunteered in our Dining Room. Through our Catering program, a group of students helped us prepare and serve a delicious lunch to our guests. Interested in catering a meal at Rosie’s Place, either as an individual or a group? Visit www.rosiesplace.org/get-involved/volunteer for more information.

“I am 85 and mostly retired from work and volunteer projects, but when an art show and sale was organized in my building, I joined in by selling a variety of photo cards with proceeds donated to Rosie’s

An excerpt of a note accompanying a generous gift

Leemarie Mosca

Place.”

from a longtime friend.

President/CEO Leemarie Mosca

Director of Communications/Editor Jamie Doyle Digital Communications Manager/Contributor Leah Westberry Communications Associate/Contributor Sara Clark Design Colette O’Neill

CommunityFriends

In May, we celebrated the resilience of our guests and the rebirth of spring with Safe & Sound: Every Day in Every Way.

The weeklong campaign culminated in a memorable night in our Dining Room honoring our guests. Thanks to the tremendous support of friends like you, we raised nearly $400,000 to support our critical work.

Rosie’s Place is so thankful for the many farms and volunteers who provide us with fresh local produce for our Dining Room and Food Pantry. Between Land’s Sake Farm, Brookwood Community Farms and Hutchins Farm we receive nearly 300 pounds of produce every week during the summer months. Every Friday, Amanda makes the trip from Concord to Boston to deliver fresh produce from Hutchins Farm as a part of REVERB’s Farm-to-Family program.

We are honored to have been included in the celebration of Andrew Lawton and Waihay Wong’s marriage this fall. In lieu of gifts, the couple invited their guests to make donations to support Rosie’s Place. We send our congratulations and thanks to the newlyweds for this wonderful support!

In June, guests joined us in the Dining Room for a delicious lunch and a colorful dessert to celebrate Pride. At Rosie’s Place, Pride is about much more than a month on the calendar. It’s about stepping in to allyship and being true advocates who are unconditionally welcoming and compassionate every day of the year.

On June 17, what would have been our founder Kip Tiernan’s 96th birthday, we held our annual celebration in our Dining Room, enjoying her favorite meal of Southern BBQ and dancing to the jazz music she loved. Fortyeight years after we first opened our doors, Kip’s indomitable spirit of activism and compassion informs everything that we do at Rosie’s Place.

In our Emergency Overnight Shelter, we work to create a safe haven and provide a sense of belonging for our guests. Regular group meals and activities such as puzzles and game nights allow our guests opportunities to gather, engage and decompress.

This year, we expanded access to on-site mental health services by more than 25%. Our team is comprised of our Recovery Support Navigator, Mental Health Clinician and a specialist from the Department of Mental Health.

In May, the Boston Business Journal announced the winners of its 14th annual CFO of the Year Awards program, which honors the best in local finance.

Rosie’s Place CFO, Liz Chaves, was named Best CFO of the Year for a Small Nonprofit. We are glad and grateful to have Liz’s talents and diligence on our team!

•

•

•

• Online: www.rosiesplace.org/holidaycards

• Phone: Sara Clark at 617.318.0238

• Email: sclark@rosiesplace.org

• Available on orders of 50+ cards

• Print a unique message in color or black and white Add logo, photo or signatures for a special touch Envelopes are included and can be customized

•

An important part of summer at Rosie’s Place is our Social Justice Institute through which we welcome high school students for an educational and enriching volunteer experience. This summer, students participated in hands-on service projects, learned about social issues and earned community service hours, all while supporting our work.

• Mail: send a check to Rosie’s Place, Attn: Holiday Cards, 889 Harrison Ave., Boston, MA 02118

Marlborough

Your Legacy, Her Opportunity

Caring support from friends like you enables Rosie’s Place to remain a lifeline for every woman who seeks our help.

Below are some tax-advantaged giving options to consider that will allow your generosity to help sustain our work now and for years to come.

IRA Rollover

If you are 70½ or older, you may take advantage of the IRA charitable rollover: You can donate up to $100,000 to satisfy the minimum required distribution of your IRA account, while also reducing your taxable income.

Your gift must pass directly from your IRA administrator to Rosie’s Place, and any transfer must be completed by December 31st of the corresponding tax year.

Gifts of Stock

Donate an appreciated stock and avoid capital gains tax, while receiving a charitable deduction of the full fair-market value.

Donor-Advised Fund

Recommend a one-time or recurring grant to Rosie’s Place from your Donor-Advised Fund. Contact your fund representative for details.

Planned Gift

You can create a better future for our guests and make an impact for years to come by including Rosie’s Place in your estate plans.

For more information, please contact Matt DeAngelis at 617.318.0294 or mdeangelis@rosiesplace.org, or visit www.rosiesplace.org/plannedgifts.

Thank you! We appreciate your consideration and commitment to our guests.

Rosie’s Place is a 501(c) (3) charitable organization. Gifts made to Rosie’s Place are tax deductible to the full extent of the law.

EIN: 04-2582187. We are proud that 88 cents of every dollar raised goes directly to services for poor and homeless women.

Please join us for our annual Funny Women…Serious Business luncheon on November 15th from noon to 2:00pm at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center.

This year we are delighted to welcome as our featured speaker, Ashley C. Ford, an acclaimed writer, host, educator and author of the New York Times best-selling memoir, Somebody’s Daughter. Ford’s story of a childhood defined by the looming absence of her incarcerated father was named a best book of the year by the New York Times, NPR and the Washington Post.

This event is made possible through the support of Presenting Sponsors Bank of America, Globalization Partners, New Balance Foundation, Christina and Michael Gordon, Anne Kubik, Kristen and John Maxwell, Michele May and David Walt and Deb and Mark Pasculano and Leading Sponsors Amundi US, Cherise and Robert Bransfield, Coldwell Banker Realty Cares Foundation, Forest Foundation, The Gilson Family Foundation, Highland Partners Charitable Fund, Erin O’Connor Kent and Patrick Kent and Pinkham Busny LLP.

Proceeds will benefit Rosie’s Place’s vital programs and services for poor and homeless women. Your support ensures that we remain a place of help and hope for more than 12,000 women in need every year.

JOIN

Sponsor opportunities are available.

Please contact Kristen Leonard for more information at 617.318.0232 or kleonard@rosiesplace.org.

WBUR’s A Christmas Carol

Join us in December for this festive holiday tradition, as WBUR personalities read Charles Dickens’ classic, A Christmas Carol. Visit www.rosiesplace.org or check our social media soon for the date and more details.

rosiesplace.org

889 Harrison Avenue Boston, MA 02118