Realtor Fontella Pappas, whose Pappas Realty does $10 million annually in Denver and Atlanta, once struggled as a single mom, wondering day-to-day how she would provide for her two kids.
Her career went decidedly upward from there, but the experience left her hungering for ways to support others in helpless situations, as friends had helped her then.
Through a church group, she helped found SomethingNew.org — with the Good Samaritan idea of taking on causes that just happen to cross one’s path.
Thatap taken Pappas (she’s director of development for Something New) to interesting places, including Selma, Ala., where a chance encounter at a civil rights museum led the group to set up a theater program to help African-American kids break out of de facto segregation that still plagues the town five decades after the famous march.
Last year, when one director’s kid went on a Spanish-abroad program to Cusco, Peru, members encountered Yoli Garcia, director of a shelter for battered women and their children — in a culture where society provides little support to women who leave abusive marriages.
“Here you have Section-8 housing, but there’s nothing like that in Cusco,” says Pappas. “The alternative is being on the street with your kids, and 90 percent go back to the abuser.”
Now, Pappas has made two trips to Cusco in setting up Nuevo Camino, supporting a dozen moms and 34 kids housed at the shelter.
“One mom named Erika reminds me so much of myself,” she recalls. “She’s entrepreneurial and there’s nothing she wouldn’t do for her kids.”
Pappas says she’s never experienced anything like the love that moms returned to her during visits. “What astounds me more,” she adds, “was the love in me that poured out to them. I feel my capacity was expanded.”
For someone who wants to experience that, Pappas can arrange a trip into Cusco; or easier to arrange, can recruit you as a $50-a-month sponsor of one of those kids. “When you can receive love, you start to believe in yourself,” she adds.
She’ll provide information by phone at 720-256-4097, or at fontellapappas@gmail.com.
The news and editorial staffs of The Denver Post had no role in this postap preparation.
