By Debbie Gardner
debbieg@thereminder.com
We all see problems around us every day. But not everyone believes they can find a solution.
Linda Mumblo does, and has.
The devout Christian and career nurse whose volunteer credits include eight medical mission trips to Honduras with World Gospel Outreach – and the co-founding with her friend Beverly Premo of the church-based New Hope Community Health Clinic that cared for the un- and underinsured in the area for 10 years – has always found a way to use her talents to make a difference.
Her latest mission is Christina’s House, a non-profit organization located in Springfield, MA, that since 2014 has provided transitional housing and life skills training for homeless women and their children.
It started with a question
Mumblo told Prime the idea to found Christina’s House truly started with an observation, and a question.
“I was attending church and I would see these men come in every week sitting in the back of the church, and they were kind-of disheveled,” Mumblo said. She asked one of the church elders about the men, and was told they were from the Springfield Rescue Mission, and attending religious services was part of the program to help them get back on their feet.
As the men appeared week after week, and grew more comfortable participating in the congregation, Mumblo said she began to think about what was available to help homeless women and their children.
Her research found there were few, if any, programs that provided the kind of housing, training and spiritual guidance she was seeing the men from the Rescue Mission receive.
Feeling “The Lord placed on my heart that I really need to do this,” Mumblo set out to fill the need and help homeless mothers become self-sufficient again.
From idea to address
Mumblo had a Board of Directors for her project in place by April 14, 2012, and a charter for a 501c3 non-profit organization shortly thereafter. But it still took the small, dedicated group two years to get from concept to buying the home on Springfield’s Madison Avenue that’s become Christina’s House.
And there was plenty of work to do even before the group started shopping for real estate.
“When we wrote the first articles of incorporation and bylaws for the 501c3, I had to work with the City of Springfield,” Mumblo said. “I was told that [the house] would never happen, but we got in under, at the time, the Dover Amendment.
“My understanding,” she continued, “Is we were the first organization in Springfield to do that. We went to the Law Department for review [of our plans].
Enacted in 1950 Massachusetts General Law Ch. 40A, Sec. 3 – also know as the Dover Amendment – exempts education, childcare, religious and faming entities from local zoning laws.
“Obviously you can’t bring in homeless women and children and not have an education program,” she said.
But even after all the permissions were obtained, getting Christina’s House up and running was no easy task.
“I think the clinic was a lot easier,” Mumblo said, adding that with that nonprofit, she had had a space in her church, which included available security and IT services as well as some donated equipment from her employer, Baystate Medical Center, to get her work off the ground.
With Christina’s House, they didn’t even have an address at first.
“We started looking at houses to see if there was something that matched our needs,” Mumblo said. “We looked at a house on Madison Avenue, and I knew it was the one for us.
“At the time we had $800 in our bank account [from early fundraising], but I knew it was going to happen,” she said.
As it happened, the home was owned by a church that was “praying a Christian organization would buy the house,” Mumblo said. “I met with the pastor and one of the trustees and asked them if they would give us time to raise the money, and give us the keys so we could give tours of the house.”
Armed with a slide show of the issues confronting homeless women and children, Mumblo and her board started giving tours of the house, and people started donating to support their mission.
“We still had to get a loan to buy the house, but we had a down payment,” Mumblo said. The loan proved harder to come by, until Mumblo eventually met with the vice president of United Bank.
“I left with a handshake and a commitment for the loan,” she said, and the non-profit purchased the property in February of 2014.
Getting ready for families
“Honestly I don’t know how everything happened, but everything we have done at the house has been donated, or done for free,” Mumblo said, adding that many times the work was – and is – done by volunteers from local and regional church groups doing mission work.
And then there are the chance volunteers, like the man who called and said he had a crib he wanted to donate.
“He didn’t bring the crib because he couldn’t find the hardware,” Mumblo said, adding the man did, however, come to see the house. “We brought him to the top floor and he said, ‘I see you’ve had some electrical upgrades, but you will need hard wired smoke and CO2 detectors, and I will do that for you. He was a master electrician and on rainy days he sent his crew over to do [the work] free of charge.”
Once the house was ready for families, Mumblo said she placed an advertisement explaining the services Christina’s House offered on a local Christian radio station called “The Q.”
The first family – a mother and son referred by an acquaintance who heard about the house on the radio – was accepted into the program in August of 2014.
By December of that year Christina’s House housed three families, all of who had committed to spend two years working their way through the program set up by Mumblo and her board.
In that first group two of the families were living in their cars, and the third was living doubled up with another family.
“Of the three one had a part-time job, the other two [women] were not working,” Mumblo said, adding that getting a job is one of the requirements for a woman and her family to stay in the program.
“We’re not looking for people who want a handout. We want to give them a hand up,” Mumblo said. “We will help them find [a job], but they have to find a job in order to stay.”
Mumblo said Christina’s House does give the women an adjustment period, usually a month or two, before requiring that they find a job.
In addition to the job search skills, Mumblo has a list of volunteers who come in to run regular education programs for the women and their children.
“The goal of the plan is to give them all the life skills they need – budgeting, how to manage their finances, nutrition, computer literacy, job search skills, resume writing, parenting classes and spiritual growth,” Mumblo said. The women are also responsible for keeping the house clean, cooking meals and arranging for childcare when necessary, though volunteers and the resident mission person will help in a pinch. At first Mumblo said the house simply had a book of rules and regulations for the women and their children to follow. Now they have a contract families must sign.
Succeeding one woman at a time
“In the beginning our goal was if we could save one family and change their lives, we would be successful,” Mumblo said. Christina’s House achieved that goal with their first three families.
“The one with the part-time job is now a corrections officer,” Mumblo said. “She went to the academy while at the house, graduated and she and her son are doing very well [and] saving to buy a house.”
The second woman, who was living in her car before coming to Christina’s House had a few setbacks, but turned her life around and eventually moved to North Carolina – “A really good move for her,” Mumblo noted.
“The third got a house from Habitat [for Humanity] and is working,” Mumblo added.
In total, Christina’s House has offered the program to 10 homeless women and their children since 2014. Though the majority stayed the two years, not every family has completed the program.
“We had someone come in and [they] went right back to the life they came from,” Mumblo said, adding the women who choose to participate in the Christina’s house program have to “want it “ to stick it out for the full two years.
“It doesn’t even mean that the people that left aren’t doing well – they still have jobs – I just think they struggle a bit more if they don’t finish,” she said. “You have to look at success differently. Our vision of success isn’t the only one – you want everyone to have the house with the white picket fence and a great life, but there are different versions of success.
“All we can do is give them the tools,” Mumblo said.
Growing the mission
Mumblo, who is now 69 – she started Christina’s house when she was 63 – recently turned more of the day-to-day work of operating the non-profit over to her daughter-in-law, Shannon, to focus on the spiritual aspect of guiding the women.
Shannon, who has a background in both social work and nursing, has been involved since Christina’s House began, originally working on fundraising to obtain a property for the program, and slowly absorbing more of the day-to-day operations.
“My job [now, as Executive Director] consists of managing the volunteer coordinator, managing the house and fundraising. I wear a lot of hats in this role,” Shannon told Prime.
Her long-term goals are many – to grow the program, possibly add a case manager to work with the women and a volunteer coordinator either through paid positions or willing volunteers – to partner with local colleges and businesses to help provide some of the educational classes in the home rather than having the women try to work the classes in around their jobs, and to find a source for reliable child care for the women in the program.
Her short-term goal is to be able to pay off the mortgage on Christina’s House in the coming year. Her five–year plan – “to be able to acquire another space or grow the program so we can house more families,” Shannon said.
When people ask her how she “does it all” for Christina’s House, Shannon tells them every job has a level of stress, but not every one has the rewards of this kind of work.
“The most gratifying piece of this is helping women and children to grow,” [to] watch them making the steps in their lives to become self-sufficient,” Shannon said.
“It’s not just a business,” she continued. “This house is a family and to watch them overcome their histories and setbacks and all the things life has given them, I don’t think there is anything better than that, and to watch them grow in their love of Christ as well.”
And the name for the house, that too, seemed destined, Shannon said.
“When I was pregnant with my daughter we were looking for a name in a baby book,” she said, adding Mumblo saw “Christina,” and knew it was the right choice.
“It means followers of Christ,” Shannon said.
Want to help?
For more inforamtion about how you can get involved with Christina’s house, including upcoming fundraisers and volunteer opportunities, visit https://christinashouse.org
