Volunteer · Speak · Give
Many of the women who help here first came through the door needing something themselves. That is not a coincidence — it is the model. Lived experience is the qualification.
Volunteer → Give a talk → Support with money → Help without money →
1 · Volunteer
Every volunteer gets an orientation, trauma-informed training, a mentor, and a standing invitation to the volunteer lounge and recognition events. You are not dropped in cold.
You are the first face someone sees. Open the space, greet every woman who walks in with real attention, offer her something warm, show her where things are, keep the welcome table stocked, and leave notes for the next shift.
You sit one-to-one with a woman, help her name what she actually needs, and connect her to it using the referral network and this site. Trauma-informed practice: validate, offer options, never pressure. Visits are logged without names.
You hold a circle — divorce, caregiving, reinvention, loneliness. Open and close with check-ins, keep the circle model (listen, do not advise, respect the time), make sure every voice lands, and debrief afterward.
The quiet work that makes an event feel effortless: chairs, snacks, printouts, greeting facilitators, taking attendance, restocking, organizing resource folders.
Draft and schedule social posts, lay out the monthly newsletter, make flyers and graphics, photograph programs (always with permission), and help run our Facebook Live conversations.
The role we are asked for most. You are matched to one woman on one specific thing you have already done — gone back to work at fifty, moved a parent into care, rebuilt after a divorce, started a small business, learned the technology. Not general life advice: a named skill meeting a named need.
Transport is the most common reason a woman misses the session she needed most. A standing offer to collect someone from the same neighbourhood as you removes that barrier entirely.
You sit with someone's parent for two hours so she can come to her own circle. Nothing clinical — company, a cup of tea, a person in the house.
An hour of your professional knowledge at a monthly talk. Lawyers, mechanics, bankers, contractors, recruiters, pharmacists, therapists. Plain language, no sales pitch.
Finding the funds and writing the applications. On a shoestring this is the role that pays for all the others.
Spanish especially, and any language spoken in this county. Both live interpreting and translating our written materials.
Some facilitators are licensed. Many are women who have been through caregiving, divorce, depression or starting over, and were trained by us. If you are reading this and wondering whether you count — you do. Tell us what you have lived through and what you are good at, and we will find the fit.
2 · Lend an hour of expertise
One hour, once. We handle everything else.
Every month we host one Facebook Live conversation and one in-person session, and each needs someone who actually knows the subject. An hour of your working knowledge saves a room full of women real money and real trouble.
Currently looking for: family and elder law attorneys, an auto mechanic, an auto dealer, a banker, a tax preparer, a licensed contractor, a recruiter, an insurance agent, a fraud investigator, a pharmacist, a credit counselor, a financial planner, a housing counselor and a licensed therapist.
Firms and employers: this counts as community service hours and we are glad to recognize you publicly.
3 · Support the Center
We would rather show you the budget than ask you to trust us. The same first year at three sizes, and every line shows what it buys.
See the full line-item budget →
Any amount. $40 covers one woman's workshop materials. $150 covers the participant support fund for a month, which is bus fare and childcare so someone can attend at all.
Recurring gifts are what let us book a facilitator for a full twelve-week circle instead of hoping the money arrives in week six. Membership tiers run $50 to $200 a month.
Fund something specific and see exactly what it did — a month of talks ($400), the evaluation line, or a year of insurance. Businesses and firms welcome.
We are in our founding year and are finalising our giving setup, so the fastest and safest route today is to contact us directly and we will arrange it with you personally. Please do not send card details through this website — we will never ask you to.
Grants and larger gifts: we will share the full business plan, the market analysis behind it, and this budget at line-item level. Ask. The budget figures are planning estimates, not quotes; the budget page says so plainly.
4 · Costs you nothing
This is a shoestring operation and will be for a while. Most of what we need is not money — it is things people already have and rarely think to offer.
Bookkeeping, design, HR, law, IT, grant writing. An hour of a professional's time is worth more to us than the equivalent in cash.
A working machine three years old is a workstation here. So is a printer, a webcam or a decent microphone.
A conference room on a weekday evening, a church hall, a quiet corner of an office. Space is our single biggest cost.
Coffee, fruit and something warm for twelve women costs very little and changes how a room feels entirely.
If your workplace can run 200 flyers, that is a month of outreach handled.
Many large Cleveland employers match staff donations or fund volunteer hours. Most people never check whether theirs does.
To a foundation officer, a reporter, a pastor, a benefits manager, a landlord with empty space. Introductions are free and they compound.
Transport is the most common reason a woman misses the session she needed most.
So a caregiver can come to her own circle. This is the single most useful two hours anyone gives us.
The hardest step is the first door. Someone arriving with a friend almost always comes back.
Volunteering, speaking, giving, or something we have not thought of. Start the conversation and we will work out where you fit.
Contact details are being finalized — see the note below.