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!

Sunday, December 17 was a great day for a race. The weather cooperated and the racers were ready sporting their Holiday gear to participate and show their support to the Community in Recovery.

We’d like to thank the Santa Maria staff, community partners, sponsors and volunteers who participated in the 8th Annual Run for Recovery. We could not have done it without you! We are very much looking forward to the next Run…. stay tuned for the 2018 race date  -it will be announced soon.

We would like to congratulate Lisa Carpenter, member of our Board, for being a recipient of the 2017 Community Quarterback Award presented by BHP on December 9.

Pictured from left to right are Anna Babin, President and CEO of United Way of Greater Houston, Lisa Bobkoff-Carpenter, member of the Board of Santa Maria and Steve Pastor, BHP President of Petroleum.

Special thanks to the Houston Texans Organization, United Way of Greater Houston, BHP and to Lisa Bobkoff-Carpenter for your commitment to the non profit organizations.

Santa Maria Hostel (SMH) was pleased to work with Shell on an imaginative and impactful program aptly named Shell Shark Tank. Our staff was asked to submit a management challenge for the consideration of a team of six incredible Shell employees. The Shell management staff team spent time with our key staff discerning the breadth of our challenge and the culture and limitations of our agency. Our challenge was one of staff recruitment, retention and training for one of our important staff positions, called Recovery Advocate. These front line employees have very difficult positions, both physically and emotionally and SMH has had trouble with high turnover among their ranks.

We were thrilled to receive concrete plans of action that would improve our recruitment, retention, training and investment in our employees as well as their overall job satisfaction. In the final presentation of the work done by the Shell employees, they were placed in the front running spot for both their presentation and assumptions made about the challenge. The award was accompanied by a $3000 cash prize and a roadmap to success.

 

By donating to Santa Maria you are helping us restore hope, transform lives and promote long-term wellness and recovery to the women and families we serve.

 

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Other ways you can support Santa Maria:

• By selecting Santa Maria Hostel Inc., as your charity of choice when shopping on AmazonSmile, .5 percent of your total purchase will go to Santa Maria.

• By donating Similac Infant Formula and new born Diapers. To coordinate in-kind donations, please contact Marcia Tapp. 

• By sharing your donations on Social Media and asking your friends and family to match your donation. The more the merrier!

Thank you so much for supporting Santa Maria. We wish you and your family a very merry Holiday Season.

 

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