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Laura’s Home crisis shelter empowers women to live their best life

Laura’s Home is part of The City Mission of Cleveland’s ministry and a 5K and 1 mile walk on June 15 benefits the crisis shelter.

CLEVELAND — Laura’s Home is for single women and women with children who are experiencing a crisis in their lives.

But what it isn’t, is just a 30-day stay like many homeless shelters. Laura’s Home is a program center and those who come here stay from nine months to a year. When they leave, they have a good-paying job and a home to call their own.

The assistant manager of Laura’s Home, Abby Uveges, says there are 55 rooms at the shelter with a waiting list, but they are “just trying to get as many people in here as we can and serve as many people as we can but it is a challenge.”

During the summer, they get some 80 calls a day from women hoping a room becomes available.

One of those women is Patricia and her 11-year old son, Isaac, who have been at Laura’s Home since November.

She moved to Cleveland from North Carolina to help her sister take care of seven kids. They both worked, but her sister got sick and ended up in the hospital for weeks.

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Bills piled up, and eventually they lost their home to live in their church’s basement. It had a restroom, but no shower or tub.

One day, Patricia decided she needed to do something. She started calling Laura’s Home. She called every day for about a month, then her phone rang.

Laura’s Home is a faith-based organization and they operate on three pillars: Help, heart and home.

Help means those that come here are provided with hygiene items, clothing, three meals a day and a safe place to be.

Heart is seen as transformation. Women and their children’s mental, physical and emotional needs are addressed.

Home is that everybody who leaves Laura’s Home leaves with stable housing and stable income because as Uveges puts it, they don’t want women “repeating the cycle of homelessness or poverty in their family.”

Patricia calls it, “the blessing I didn’t know I needed.”

Laura’s Home is not funded by taxpayer money. It operates totally on private donations and monies received from local foundations. On June 15, all proceeds from Run with a Mission at Cleveland’s Metroparks Zoo will go to Laura’s Home. This 8th annual run is presented by the Sherwin-Williams Women’s Club and emceed by WKYC’s Maureen Kyle.

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