On Wednesday November 28, Constable Alan Rosen and the Precint One Office organized their annual Car Wash and Toy Drive. For this year, they chose Santa Maria as the beneficiary agency for their fundraiser. This was an all day event that started at 7am at the Dr. Gleem Car Wash on Ella St.

On Wednesday, December 12, Constable Alan Rosen along with several members of the Precint One Office came to Bonita House to personally deliver the toys to our women and their children. We’d like to thank them and everyone who donated to this Fundraiser. It was such a pleasure to watch this happen and to witness the joy spread around campus.

“We are not just about law enforcement we are about integrating and being a part of the community… And this is a group of people that are trying to go trough the healing process and we want to be there to encourage them and support them.” –Constable Alan Rosen mentioned during a short interview at Santa Maria.

The renovation project was valued at over $300,000 and included a generous amount of donated materials and volunteer time. Volunteers participated in refurbishing the dining room and two group counseling rooms. They also landscaped the outdoor green space and playground area and installed new playground equipment and a shade sail.

Click to Watch VIDEO!

The project’s design team contributed over 320 hours towards the planning and design of the renovation. The design team was led by Kirksey Architecture and included LKB Architecture, Rivers Barden Architects, Powers Brown Architecture, Terralab Landscape Architects, and Harvey Builders.

We are extremely thankful to the 40+ corporate sponsors and over 100 volunteers who made this project possible.

Over 30 volunteers from ExxonMobil visited Santa Maria -Bonita House on October 16 for a Day of Caring. This group of caring volunteers helped us to take care of our campus by looking after the flower beds in the outside play area, painting the hallways of our Housing program and doing several Halloween themed arts and crafts with our clients. These halloween crafts will also serve to decorate our campus! It was a fun filled day and we are grateful for the support of ExxonMobil and United Way of Greater Houston for their support to Santa Maria.

Palais Royal partners with us to open a non-transactional store for those we serve

On Thursday June 28, Santa Maria Hostel in partnership with Palais Royal hosted the Grand Opening of  a brand new, on-site, non-transactional store that will be accessible to all women undergoing treatment at Santa Maria Hostel. This store is donated by Palais Royal, so the women of Santa Maria can come “shop” and fulfill their basic needs and the needs of their children.

Before the ribbon cutting, Nadine Samp, CEO of Santa Maria mentioned, “Santa Maria is about restoring lives and restoring hope. So, this store really represents the first opportunity for them (our clients) and allows them to see that they are in a safe place and where people are going to love them no matter where they’ve been because we know their past does not determine their future”.

In his remarks, Bill Gentner, EVP and CMO of Stage Stores said, “We know that it is so important to not just be in our communities but to be a part of them and give back. So for that reason, we have our Community Counts deal. For that it is such an important deal for us to make people lives better and I can’t imagine doing it at a better place than here, with you”.

If you’d like to help us keep this store fully equipped, we welcome gentle used or new women and children clothing. Please contact Cynthia Turner cturner@santamariahostel.org to coordinate donations.

Santa Maria Hostel in partnership with artist Branislav Jankic hosted MILA – A sculpture and performance

 Words by Celia Wickham

In Branislav Jankic’s latest iteration of his ongoing visual and literary project Letter to My Mother, Jankic has created a participatory performative experience, resulting in a powerfully collective sculptural object. The piece, which took place on June 20th 2018, involved the women of Santa Maria Hostel in Houston Texas, a recovery center for mothers overcoming substance abuse and addiction. 

Stemming from Jankic’s own experiences growing up in former Yugoslavia with a mother suffering from alcohol addiction, this specific iteration of the project takes its name, Mila, after Jankic’s own mother. Through the creation of Letter to My Mother, and the unfolding of Jankic’s own individual narrative, this performative work allows for the opening of a communal space, where activated and ritualised healing gives way to recovery and transformation. 

 As the performative work began, the mothers of Santa Maria Hostel were invited into the space and asked to carve their names and the names of their children, into a rhombus shaped table. Made from salvaged wood, the table’s shape is symbolic of traditional Eastern European understandings of the rhombus as a sign of motherhood and fertility. Through the performative action of engraving, these women were able to re-write their experiences of motherhood, as their stories folded into one another, coming together in the creation of this shared and sculpted object. In this way, each woman was given a sacred space to re-shape and shift binding concepts of both maternal and paternal love. 

Through their communal and collective actions, mark making became both process and site for the unravelling and transformation of trauma to occur. It was in these women’s sculptural reckonings that the mothers of Santa Maria Hostel were able to create and carve the way for new and empowered futures to unfold. In this process of inscription, new meanings were accessed and made possible, turning trauma outwards, as we held a space to bear witness to its marks, both seen and unseen. 

 As the externalisation and witnessing of trauma took place, it gave way to a gap for grief and mourning to emerge, whilst still allowing an opening for recovery and catharsis. As the sculptural object came to be the embodiment of the lives and memories of these women, histories became traversed and delineated, and their stories stitched together through time.

During the piece, the sound of the mothers etching their names on to the table, and the meticulous movement of their hands, was recorded from a camera above. Through the careful documentation and capturing of these moments, it is Jankic’s intention to use these sounds and images in the continuation of the work in its installation form. 

This form will exist through Jankic projecting these recordings on top of the wooden sculptural object, as a ghostly and powerful doubling is achieved, where past, present, and future begin to become blurred and transposed. In this way, both the physical and the ephemeral are given space to co-exist and intermingle within the object, as both the marks of time past, and present, are witnessed and memorialized. 

The work shows the ways in which these paths of articulation and healing are not straightforward, and never will be, but through the boldness of their inscriptions and tellings, these women’s stories are powerful and radiate the strength of the maternal bond. 

To find out more information about Branislav Jankic and the Letter to My Mother project, please go to www.lettertomymother.us

For information about this partnership contact: msalgado@santamariahostel.org

A New Start Luncheon, benefiting Santa Maria Hostel, was held on Tuesday, May 22 at the River Oaks Country Club, to honor and recognize the many women and families whose lives had been transformed as a result of their recovery.

Deborah Duncan host of Great Day Houston with KHOU-TV, was awarded the “Visionary Award” at the luncheon.

Branislav Jankic was honored with the “Rise Award.” Jankic is a Serbian-American artist, director and photographer based in New York and Chicago. His wife Monika Jagaciak accepted the award on his behalf.

Two of Santa Maria former clients, Lisa Carpenter and Michelle Hansford, were the guest speakers and shared their inspiring stories with all our guests.

We’d like to thank our Board members, our sponsors, staff, community partners, volunteers and guests who made our 3rd Annual Luncheon a great success!

We are truly honored and excited to be the recipient of the AEC Cares Project-Houston. Renovations to the Santa Maria Jacquelyn House will start in October of 2018.

These renovations will be lead by AEC professionals and will make a huge impact in the daily lives of our clients -and their families- who call this campus their home.

“We at ConstructConnect are proud to partner with Santa Maria Hostel for our 2018 AEC Cares project,” explained Dave Conway, ConstructConnect CEO and President of AEC Cares. “The Jacqueline House provides critical support to women in recovery, and we’re excited to give that facility a facelift. It is an honor to bring together local architects, contractors, product manufacturers and customers to create a more attractive and warmer space for women and children in the Houston community.”

We are grateful to AEC Cares for coming to Houston this year and specially for choosing Santa Maria. We can’t wait to get started!