Dégagé Ministries to host event to benefit local women battling homelessness

Dégagé Ministries will be hosting an event called Open Door Open Hearts on Thursday, March 5 to benefit the services they provide for women in the Grand Rapids area. It is an event by women, for women and to benefit women. Grand Rapids women will leave the event with concrete ways to help women struggling with homelessness in the Grand Rapids community.

Dégagé runs the Open Door Women's Center, a safe place for women in crisis to stay while they get back on their feet. On any given day, up to 40 women are staying in the Open Door. Since the program launched, it has helped over 3000 individual women.

"There are some women who have been chronically homeless off and on for years right next door to someone who is first time homeless," Dégagé's Executive Director Marge Palmerlee says. "[There are] a lot of different reasons women come through our doors."

"I'm grateful that I'm not in the snowbank," Brenda Schuhman, a resident of the Open Door for the past 11 weeks, says with a small laugh.

Residents of the Open Door meet weekly with a full-time patron advocate, who helps them set and meet their goals and move forward. The patron advocate also helps them to get back on their feet by taking them to the bank, to get psychiatric evaluations or to meet with a landlord. When the patron advocate program was introduced, the average stay in the Open Door was cut in half.

"You're just trying to get a job and get back on your feet," Schuhman says. "A lot of it you just have to do yourself, to have the strength to do it."

Dégagé also offers a whole host of other services that the women in the Open Door have access to, including a program that helps the women to procure state identification at no cost, which includes tracking down hard-to-find birth certificates. They have access to legal services, a mailing address, lockers to store belongings, laundry services and outings into the Grand Rapids community.

The ministry also provides anger management classes, counseling, AA meetings, NA meetings, financial management classes, Bible studies and even smoking cessation classes.

Women can stay in the Open Door from 7 p.m. until 8 a.m. During the day, many women volunteer through Dégagé itself or for partner organizations like Godfrey Lee School. Volunteering through Dégagé earns women a voucher, which allows them to pay for some of the ministry's additional services, such as a haircut, coffee, a pair of socks, a meal or a blanket.

"A lot of our services have a small fee attached to them, but that allows people to make those choices of how to spend their money," Palmerlee says. "It allows them to feel like they're a participant rather than a recipient."

Dégagé patrons also have opportunities to earn Dégagé dollars by performing one of the 40 custodial tasks at the shelter each day, which take less than 20 minutes and can be done by someone of any skill level. They are paid in a voucher or bus ticket. Grand Rapids residents can also purchase these vouchers to give to panhandlers.

"We're all just women," Palmerlee says. "Some women are going through a really tough time and happen to be homeless, but the similarities—the things that bring us together—are greater than the things that divide us."

The Open Hearts Open Doors event takes place on Thursday, March 5 from 6-8 p.m. at The Cheny Place. The event will serve hors d'oeuvres and a hot drink bar, and offer massages, caricatures, professional hair and makeup services and a food demonstration. Registration is $25. There will also be raffles and 50/50 drawings and other ways to financially support the ministry.