Shannon Mumblo

Christina's House
christinashouse.org

Thank you so much for your continued commitment to Christina’s House.  This past year was a year of tremendous growth and learning opportunities.  Your monthly contribution is helping to make an impact in our homes and community; you are truly helping to save lives.

We had one family graduate from our program in 2021. She purchased her first-ever home with her three girls! Her oldest daughter was baptized this past summer; it was such a joyous life-changing experience for all who were able to be present. This mom defied her fears and was one of our Masters of Ceremonies for our 9th Annual Gala. She did a tremendous job. We were able to get back to in-person classes and gatherings and safely continued to navigate the COVID-19 pandemic.

Our services have doubled with the opening of our Union Location in late 2020.  Thanks to you, we continue to thrive despite the challenges of the current pandemic. We reached many of our goals for 2021 as well. We continued with the development of our board and welcomed two new board members and created a finance committee. We developed our own in-house financial counseling program and began working to create a Trauma-Informed culture within our organization through monthly staff training.  We welcomed two Volunteer Youth Mentors, Aaron and Michelle Jones who work weekly with our youth at Madison Avenue to provide enrichment opportunities and Biblical Instruction.

We welcomed six social work interns from local colleges who helped us develop our own Parenting Program, blog posts, early childhood goals, demographic analysis of current and past participants, and two new amazing programs: Each One Reach One and CHRISTmas!  Through our Each One Reach One Program we strive to reach 30 families in the community to correlate with every one graduate who has gone through our program.  This doubles our impact on our community that is within a one-mile radius of each of our homes and also includes a local elementary school that serves many food-insecure children. Our CHRISTmas initiative blessed over 100 families and youth with the joy of receiving Christmas presents all donated by local individuals, businesses, and churches. We also assisted a Haitian refugee family and a teen mother by providing hotel stays and safe shelter while connecting them to ongoing supports and resources and finding them safe housing to meet their needs and reunite them with their family.

Our six current families are making great strides and we anticipate two graduations this year and 3-5 new families entering our homes. Our mothers are earning their GED, taking college classes, working daily, realizing their goals, and most importantly, growing closer to Christ! Our Human Services Professional, Samantha Herring works with each mother several times a week to connect them with services, encourage them, and to help them reach their goals. 

We created a formal onboarding process for our interns and volunteers and continue to grow our team to meet the needs of our evolving and growing program. We have two Missionary House Mothers serving in each of our locations and hired two of our graduates who serve on weekends to monitor our homes and provide mentorship to our current program participants. Two other graduates also serve as volunteers, one runs a sobriety group and the other provides fellowship nights for program participants. 

For 2022, we have many goals! We will start a three-year collaborative project with Rachel’s Table to create sustainable gardens in both of our locations. We work diligently each day to refine our infrastructure to create a solid and safe foundation for our program participants and team. We continue to work to pay down our mortgages and made great progress in 2021! We will be starting our first-ever Annual Fund campaign and hope to use a portion of the funds raised to build a cash reserve and endowment funds with a portion of our proceeds.  We are considering creating an emergency shelter room within one of our locations to meet the short-term acute needs of women with children in crisis. With your help, we will continue to expand our footprint to affect the lives of other people in need in our community along with our graduates and current program participants.

We invite anyone who would like to see what their support is going to, to visit our homes. We would love to see you. We wish you a year filled with good health and prosperity and are grateful that you are part of our Christina’s House Family!