Students learn valuable skills during a class at the Women’s Circle.
Photo provided
By Janis Fontaine
In four tiny rooms in a neat-as-a-pin yellow house a block off Federal Highway in Boynton Beach, 300 women are being saved from a life of poverty each year.
The Women’s Circle has been offering free literacy programs and job training for anyone who wants it for the last 15 years. It has helped thousands of local women achieve financial stability through their literacy and job-training classes.
“Illiteracy is our biggest challenge,” Sister Lorraine Ryan said. Ryan, a sister with the Medical Mission Sisters, founded the Women’s Circle 15 years ago with Sister Joan Carusillo. She has served as its executive director ever since. She accepts no salary for her work and calls herself a volunteer.
The circle has six paid staff members and dozens of volunteers. Its annual budget was about $20,000 in 2000. Today it’s about $280,000. The money comes from grants, donations and volunteer efforts, including its annual gala. The 501(c)3 nonprofit is not supported by any government, church or religious organization.
Ryan says many of the circle’s clients are Haitian and have never attended school at all. “They can’t read or write, so they can’t finds jobs.”
The circle sponsors literacy classes in English and Creole, job training including a variety of computer classes, citizenship classes, and life-skills classes in parenting, health and nutrition. It also teaches sewing and knitting classes.
And when someone is ready to go to an interview, the circle provides professional apparel for her to wear. “Our goal is empowering these women,” Ryan said, which means supporting them in every area of their lives.
The programs are working. In 2013, Laurette Valcena and Tee Jackson, job development coordinators, helped 87 women find jobs. In 2014, 67 women found jobs as sales associates, administrative clerks, project managers, medical assistants and telemarketers.
Ryan, who earned a master’s degree in public health from Johns Hopkins University, worked to combat extreme poverty in India for 15 years as a nurse, counselor and public health specialist. But she put her position as the coordinator of health services on hold to care for her aging parents in Boynton Beach.
“I was well aware of the poverty, especially in single- parent families in Boynton, and I wanted to do something. I started by asking people what they needed. I surveyed 50 families.”
There was one common theme: They wanted jobs.
For some women, that meant starting with the ABCs. Associate director Helena Wallis says they didn’t know how to learn or study. And they needed help understanding our culture, and just fitting in. “We have a life-skills focus. We talk about practical things, like health and nutrition, we provide counseling to women who need it.”
Some of these women started with little and lost what little they had. “They’ve seen a lot of sadness and death,” Ryan said. The 2010 earthquake that devastated Haiti is a brutally painful memory for many of these women.
But when you see them, they are happy to be learning. Happy to be making progress with their English and happy to feel like they fit in somewhere.
All of this activity and personal growth takes place in four immaculate but crowded rooms, each smaller than the next. Women sit shoulder to shoulder, blossoming before your eyes.
The staff and volunteers celebrate every success story; and for these women those moments are huge: Like the woman who is confident enough now to speak up at the PTA meeting at her child’s school. Or the woman who can now fill out a job application online without help.
Most new clients find the Women’s Circle through word of mouth, and currently, its client base is about 70 percent Haitian. “We working to expand our diversity,” Ryan said. “We would like to serve more Hispanic women, and more Caucasians.”
A growing program called Moving Forward should attract those groups. This two-week intensive career-development program covers topics such as resumes and cover letters, mock interviews, time management, and how to present yourself, including professional dress.
Meetings are 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. the first two weeks of the month at the United Methodist Church in Boynton Beach, because there simply isn’t enough room at the Women’s Circle.
But that, too, will change. The circle is expanding. A new building will swallow up the existing structure and quadruple its square footage.
The annual gala, which raised $134,000 in February, has supported the expansion so far: The Circle demolished the building next door and now has a nice parking lot.
The new site is expected to cost $1.3 million and be finished in 2017. A capital campaign is underway to raise the money, and donations are needed. “There are naming rights available,” Ryan says.
Sometimes people ask why the circle serves only women. Wallis said, “Most areas have a lot of programs out there helping men. We want to help women because they are the heart of the family.”
Here are six ways you can help: Make a monetary gift; donate clothing suitable for job interviews; donate fabric for dressmaking or yarn for the knitting class; donate office supplies, paper products and flat-screen computer monitors; donate money to buy textbooks; become a volunteer. Call 244-7627 or visit womenscircle.org.
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First United Methodist Church of Boynton Beach is congratulating Nahdia Perez as the 2015 Danny Hall Memorial Scholarship winner. The Boynton Beach High School grad plans to study cosmetology.
The scholarship is awarded to a physically challenged senior in memory of Hall, who was 43 when he lost a 33-year struggle with Becker’s Syndrome Muscular Dystrophy.
Call 732-3435.
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The Interfaith Cafe will meet from 7 to 9 p.m. June 19, at the South County Civic Center, 16700 Jog Road, Delray Beach. The Interfaith Cafe promotes interfaith dialogue, awareness and understanding by uniting people of different faiths in conversation. A different topic is discussed each month.
Coffee, tea and light desserts are served. A donation of $5 is requested to defray expenses. Call 901-3467.
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Back to Woodstock 2015, a fundraiser for Family Promise of South Palm Beach County, which helps local children and families who are temporarily homeless, takes place at 7 p.m. June 19, at the Delray Elks Lodge, 265 N.E. Fourth Ave., in Delray Beach.
Take a trip back to the late ’60s with live music, food, a costume contest and a best brownie contest. Everyone is encouraged to wear 1960s attire, such as your favorite tie-dyed shirt or Nehru jacket, love beads and bell-bottom jeans.
Tickets are $25. Sponsorship levels are $500, $250 and $100. Call 265-3370, Ext. 103.
Janis Fontaine writes about people of faith, their congregations, causes and community events. Email her at janisfontaine@outlook.com.
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