Maggie’s Place
General Mailing Address:
PO BOX 1102
Phoenix, AZ 85001
Elizabeth House (Tempe, AZ)
Office: (480) 491-0446
ASU Student Involvement:
Students can opt to do volunteer work by doing necessary tasks like cleaning/yard work, cooking meals, office work, donation organization, running errands, and tutor mothers. Students who wish to take a more active role and are female, and over the age of 21 can apply to be a staff member in one of the Maggie’s Place homes for a year. All Maggie’s place homes have a list of needed items that interested individuals can donate.
Feminist Goals Met at Maggie's Place
Maggie’s place is an outreach program that provides housing and immediate needs for expectant mothers with the Catholic teachings of social responsibility. (Maggie’s Place. 2010). The goal of Maggie’s place is to provide expectant mothers with food, clothing, parenting classes, health care, shelter in the immediacy of their situations as well as prepare them for transition on into getting education, working, and living on their own with community resources, government aid programs and weekly counseling sessions. With pregnancy facing 35% of women in the homeless population this organization wants address to problem of the ever-increasing amount of homelessness with reference to women and provide a safety net for homeless expectant mothers. (Gelburg, et al. 2004, p. 92) Maggie’s place is an organization that aligns itself with feminist goals yet is hoping to address that problem using Catholic doctrine to solve the problem of lack of sexual health resources to the homeless population.
Maggie’s place has all the same goals as a feminist organization does excepdt has their backbone in Catholic beliefs. Maggie’s place follows the idea of social justice and feforem and being a part of religion and belief and in doing so cannot be called feminist. In her writing, bell hooks points out that there are various definitions of feminism and goals through those multifaceted definitions one requirement for feminist thinkers and organizations is freedom in reproductive and sexual health. The Catholic Church is openly anti-abortion and in so in not a feminist organization, yet Maggie’s Place instead of being an organization trying to change legislation they are working to provide women with resources to perhaps forgo an abortions, step out of homelessness and provide a better life for their child. Maggie’s place would be a feminist organization if it did not have structural foundation in a doctrine that opposes reproductive freedom, but because it does doesn’t mean we can quantify their work as something other than social change. Maggie’s Place is one outlet trying to address the problem of the lack of social support programs in place for women or the homeless population. The percentage of homeless women pregnant is much higher than that of lower income women (at 6%) and this could be in due part to lack of health care facilities, lack of gynecological services, lack of contraceptives, and inhibitors such as transportations cost, program requirements and feeling of neglect at these programs. (Gelburg, L., et al. 2004, p. 93-94, 96)
A second study looked at how homeless women can be so deprived of social support programs and health care programs that they may use drugs to induce abortions. (Ensign, J., 2001, p. 133-134) This study and the work Maggie’s Place does, points to the still growing needs of outreach programs for homeless women and women below the poverty line. By profiling this organization we hope to increase volunteer interest for ASU students as well as show a format in which social change can be done in the future. By adopting Maggie’s Place’s format of providing resources and basic needs to these others we can reproduce this type of social change in various cities and populations.
References
Ensign, J. (2001) . Reproductive health of homeless adolescent women in Seattle, Washington, USA. Women and Health, 31 (2-3), 133-151
Gelburg, L., Browner, C. H., Lejano, E., & Arangua, L. (2004) . Access to women’s health care: A qualitative study barriers perceived by homeless women. Women and Heath, 40 (2), 87-100.
Maggies Place. Retrieved from http://www.maggiesplace.org/
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