An Afternoon at Our House
Sitting in my Gender Studies class tonight, I had the hardest time focusing on the material. I could not stop covertly wiping my tears, and the icky feeling in the pit of my stomach would not go away. I could not stop thinking about the fact that I will go home to my own apartment tonight and use my own bathroom, while so many mothers at Our House will have to care for their babies in a communal restroom and go to sleep wondering if they will be back on the street after their six month stay at Our House.
As Sabine Augustin, the Program Services Coordinator of Our House noted during our tour yesterday, the women who come to their facility for help walk in feeling like “absolute failures.” Of course, these women are not failures at all. Instead, the intersections of our oppressive economic, racial, and patriarchal social structures have left these women, and millions like them, severely disadvantaged, scared, and alone. Sabine noted that many of the women and children of Our House suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), so the staff must be particularly considerate of the psychological and social needs of residents.
However, the Our House staff does more than just accommodate for the special circumstances of the families. Our House provides women and children with opportunities to break the cycle of homelessness. On weekdays, the children of Our House are provided with a NAEYC-accredited early childhood education program, and free nutritious meals. Knowing that their children are cared for in a safe environment, the mothers are then free to work or search for jobs while their children are at the daycare. Individual case managers help each mother find employment and education opportunities, while connecting them to other vital services, such as clinics and psychological care. Our House also provides families with counseling services, educational workshops, job training, and even the opportunity for mothers to receive a Child Development Associate (CDA) certificate which would enable them to work in the field of early childhood education.
During our tour of the facility, Sabine brought us upstairs to the emergency shelter, where we got to see the inside of the shelter bedroom as well as the community bathroom. About a year ago, I reconnected with an old friend who had become homeless after aging out of his group home and falling victim to drug addiction. Because I had heard his stories of life on the streets, I naïvely thought that I would be prepared for what I saw at the Our House emergency shelter. Instead of numbers, each room is marked with an inspiring name. When Sabine opened the door to the room entitled “Courage,” my stomach dropped. The room, which was probably around 200 square feet, housed a family of four. Next to the sink, I saw bottles of pedialyte, formula, and childrens’ Tylenol. My eyes started to water as I began thinking about how difficult having a newborn must be, especially when you do not know where you will get your next meal, or what you may have to do for it. I also thought about the warmth and kindness that traumatized, disadvantaged, and worn down new mothers experience at Our House, which leads to our service learning project.
Because of the shelter’s tight quarters, it will undergo renovations next year to ensure that every bedroom has both a window and a bathroom. Our primary responsibility for the service learning project is to research best practices for environmental safety in shelters for women and children. When looking solely at the population size of the shelter, designing a floor plan seems rather simple. Each family could have a dorm-like space and we could call it a day. However, because of the individual needs of all of the residences, including their experiences with PTSD, careful consideration is necessary. Living in a confined space with many small children would prove to be extremely stressful for anyone, and it is certainly not an issue that only pertains to homeless mothers. That being said, the upstairs shelter facility must be utilized in a way that takes advantage of all of the square footage available. It will take extensive research of high occupancy spaces such as hospitals, rehab centers, shelters, and even boarding schools to determine the best bedroom layout for accommodating small children, while maintain privacy for mothers.
One environmental safety concern that Sabine mentioned would be safety from other residences. Conflict is an inevitable problem in any high occupancy situation, and is in no way limited to shelters. This concern reminded me of policies utilized at a residential treatment center where I volunteer that serves children with severe emotional and psychological problems. At the home, each child has their own room in which the head of the bed faces the door. This sounds simple, but has proven to be extremely effective for individuals with violence-related PTSD. When a bed faces a door, an individual is less likely to become triggered during the night, and there is less fear of intrusion and assault. Another seemingly simple policy at the treatment center is that each bedroom is equipped with a ceiling fan. Living in a bedroom equipped with a ceiling fan would give mothers a sense of autonomy, as they would be able to control room temperature, which would also alleviate some of the stress of feeling crammed in a small space. The simple act of controlling a room’s temperature would make a shelter bedroom feel more like an apartment, than a facility where everything is controlled for you.
I am especially excited about our service learning project because we are not only gaining experience from an outside organization, but from a non-profit organization that has such an incredibly inspiring impact on Atlanta’s homeless communities. Our House is a beautiful organization that provides families with the tools to overcome hardship and break the cycle of homelessness. In the Unit 1 article “Wicked Problems in Technical Communication,” the author noted the importance of incorporating and encouraging civic engagement through service learning projects, and I believe that our class projects are doing just that. Although our technical writing class includes students from a variety of disciplines, we can all work towards being better stewards of our community. Even if we don’t have the funds to make a hefty cash donation to charity, we can all pitch in as volunteers or by donating baby wipes and other small items to Our House and the other nonprofits. I hope that through the service learning project, every student in our class realizes just how blessed we are and the importance of giving back, even if it is just giving our time.