She was alone, with no family and no partner to help with the baby on the way.
“I landed in the mountain community when I was pregnant. That’s when my whole story started,” said the single mother, who asked to remain anonymous.
She became a client of Peaceworks Inc. in Bailey, then Mountain Area Pregnancy Center and, eventually, Evergreen Christian Outreach, or EChO, where she said she learned valuable skills that helped her prepare her résumé and search for jobs.
Five years later, she is a client with Blue Spruce Habitat for Humanity based in Evergreen, which has helped her become a homeowner.
“Yesterday, I signed off on the papers, so it’s official,” she said in her self-described go-getter attitude.
The woman is one of many who have benefited from the tight network of area organizations that collaborate to help clients succeed.
“Mostly what it’s taught us is how we need to stay together,” Jill Sneed, executive director at Mountain Area Pregnancy Center, said about the collaboration with other local organizations such as Blue Spruce Habitat for Humanity, EChO, Mountain Resource Center in Conifer and Peaceworks.
Sneed said members of the organizations try to meet on a regular basis and communicate to know what the others are offering, who they are helping and what they need.
Each acts as part of the others’ success.
“We excel in our area, but we don’t have to invent something when a need comes up,” she said.
Kathleen O’Leary, executive director at Blue Spruce Habitat for Humanity, is a trained instructor of a Bridges Out of Poverty class that teaches staff and boards of nonprofit organizations what poverty looks like and how to help families transition out of it.
“I think anything we can do to help the other organizations and help the people we all serve is a great thing to do,” she said. In turn, she said, Blue Spruce Habitat often refers clients to services such as the workforce training available through EChO and Mountain Resource Center.
Members of these organizations and representatives of local churches have recently formed a task force to confront the particularly challenging issue of housing in the foothills, Sneed said.
“On a monthly basis, we see probably about 40 to 50 homeless individuals,” Sharon Smith, executive director at Evergreen Christian Outreach, said. She is part of the task force looking into affordable and transitional housing for the area.
“Everybody knows and has identified that there is a need,” she said.
Smith said EChO works closely with Mountain Resource Center and the two plan to host a joint job fair in the spring.
Mary Alice Cohen, operations director at Mountain Resource Center, said the socioeconomic diversity in the mountain communities also poses different challenges than in urban settings, where distinct groups are often concentrated in certain areas.
“We have families that are very, very affluent and then we have families that are living well below the poverty line,” Cohen said. That can cause people in need to feel isolated and embarrassed to take advantage of programs and services, she said.
Cohen said local teachers report children coming to school hungry, but their parents don’t sign up for free and reduced lunch.
“We have families that are living in crisis, but they are afraid to ask for help,” she said.
Josie Klemaier: 303-954-2465, jklemaier@denverpost.com
