This past week, I took a trip to Sarah’s Hope at Hannah More in Reisterstown, Maryland with an on-campus organization to take a deeper look into homelessness and battered women shelter programs. I wanted to observe first-hand the living rehabilitation centers, which many women and children are forced to turn to due to varying external factors.

Sarah’s Hope is a 24-hour emergency program aiming to shelter and protect women and children currently dealing with the detrimental effects of homelessness. The shelter allows for the families to get back on track while offering to them the necessary living essentials to do so. Sarah’s Hope provides the women and children of this program with intensive care management, hot meals (breakfast, lunch and dinner), as well as activities and classes for all to participate in. The mission of Sarah’s Hope is to successfully preserve the family unit by providing a resource to these families, eventually allowing them to gain long-term self-sufficiency.

Sarah’s Hope provides its members with the basic essentials of living until they are able to provide for themselves. The shelter is primarily focused on having the women feel confident and boosting their self-esteem, which is why monthly rewards and recommendations are given to each member. Signs are hung from doors and in the lobby recognizing who has the cleanest room, the most positively improved member, most well mannered on the floor, etc. These act as great positive reinforcements for their hard work and increase the desire to strive towards further improvement.

In regard to the atmosphere of the facility, Sarah's Hope was a warm, welcoming environment with spacious rooms and close living quarters. Traditionally, most homeless shelters do not provide the families with their own private rooms. Sarah's Hope believes that by giving each family their own room, the women and children develop a sense of privacy and responsibility to keep their room clean.

My visit to Sarah's Hope was truly an eye-opening experience and definitely worth paying a visit to if given the opportunity. I was able to peek into a life completely different than mine, a life that unfortunately many people from all over the world are subjected to live. Sarah's Hope is making great strides toward the bettering of each community, one woman and child at a time. To find out more information about this organization and others alike, please click this link.