Pastor Doriane thanks so much for joining us today to talk about the Deborah House and the Deborah House Project.

In 2011.

You started the Deborah Project.

What was behind that and what was the need that you saw to make you feel like you needed something like that in this community?

- Well, I had been pastoring about a decade at that time and working with families throughout the community and I began to notice a lot of single parent families falling through the cracks, not having basic needs being met.

And so it was at that time that I decided, let's come together, let's provide a support group to encourage, to inspire, to educate and to empower women.

And that's what we began to do.

And I'm telling you, it went from seven women to 300 women in a year's time and it just took off.

So we invited moms and their children to come together on Saturdays.

We provided a hot meal, mentoring, childcare, diapers, household supplies, personal care items, and an inspirational speaker from community to really come and motivate and encourage.

And so that group began to grow and now we feed about 80 moms and kids in every session.

And like I said, we're a family.

We come together, we encourage, we inspire, and we're seeing women get their education, go back to school, get housing, transportation, get on their feet.

And we've seen such positive things come out of this program.

You know, they say it takes a village to raise a child.

And I believe that's true.

We come together as mothers and we encourage and support one another.

- Just being here with the women, it's a beautiful feeling.

You know, just meeting them from the beginning that they come in here and then it's a beautiful fill in when it comes to them leaving here.

I try to create a space where they can be themselves and not to be timid and to know that they have a, you know, for the time that they are here, they don't have to worry about anything because they're off the streets right now.

It's good to know that having a good meal, a place to stay, a warm bed to sleep in knowing that these children are off the streets is very heartwarming.

- There's a story behind The Deborah House.

I was at the Deborah Project and I was handing a mom a box of supplies.

And I thought, "Well, you know, I'm doing a great thing, right?

She's got laundry soap, she's got soap, she's got deodorant, she'll be fine for this week."

And the woman said to me in such a profound way, she said, "Pastor, thank you for the box.

Me and my child are gonna take it to the car 'cause that's where we're sleeping tonight."

And when I heard that and I realized how many families in West Michigan are homeless, the numbers are staggering.

How many mothers and children are sleeping in cars?

The numbers are staggering.

And I'm thinking, I'm going home to my comfortable house and my comfortable bed, but they're gonna sleep in the car tonight with no heat.

And so with that in mind, I just talked to a few women of faith and our board at the church, I said, "Let's start a home.

Let's open a home."

And so we did that in 2015.

It's now 2024 and we've housed over 120 moms and kids today.

And I would say about 90% are successful and go on to safe, affordable housing.

So it's been a life-changing experience here at the Deborah House.

- I ended up homeless with my two kids.

Wasn't easy, I was house hopping for two months before I got here at The Deborah House.

I was questioning myself as a parent, am I'm doing good as a parent to my two girls?

Trying not to get discouraged.

It was scary because I'm a woman with two kids and homeless.

Thinking about where I'm gonna lay my head, where my next meal is gonna come from, where our next bath is gonna come from.

It was just very stressful until I reached out to Deborah House.

- Just knowing their struggle, I just get a little bit emotional because I've been through it before.

And just giving them the love that they need.

Within the time that they're here, they are growing.

And then I see like the determination of wanting to have their own.

So when they're here, it's just like a relaxing feeling where they can have a place of peace.

So while they're here, they are growing, they are finding like jobs, they are trying to find homes.

So once they leave here, they got all the resources to make sure that, you know, I'm not going to go back to that old lifestyle.

I'm gonna go ahead and strive and just move forward.

- I had the dream of always getting my license, my driver's license, and I decided to go forward with that.

I'm getting my GED.

I graduate in June.

I'm also finally be moving into my own home real soon.

- What lights up my heart is seeing women get on their feet.

What lights my heart is seeing women be empowered.

Particularly women of all walks of life and women of color especially because we understand sometimes the statistics, we understand that even for Black women, there's three times more likely to have low birth weight babies.

They're three times more likely to birth stillborn babies.

And so knowing the data out there, seeing women be empowered, having healthy babies getting on their feet, that does it for me.

- Tell us why it is called The Deborah House.

- Deborah was a powerful woman in the Bible, and if you read her story, you know that she was trying to lead.

And as you read the story, you see she had to lead alone in many ways.

And she had to take the helm, she had to do what needed to be done.

And so that word Debra is an encouragement to us as women to sometimes, we have to arise as a single parent and we have to lead and we have to fight for our families to ensure their safety and their health.

- And how important is this, would you say then, with all of that said, to keep this going?

- Well, you know, Deborah is a vision that many of us have and we want to continue the work, we want to see greater support and we wanna see greater resources.

And I have other cities, Jennifer, that are also a part of this program.

Muskegon has a program.

I have some folks in Houston that wanna open a program, some folks in North Carolina.

So we wanna see it not just for West Michigan.

We wanna see it go across the nation and we wanna see women empowered and begin to arise.

- It is just so positive.

Being at The Deborah House, it helped me a whole lot.

It helped me to get to know myself as a young woman, a young lady.

It doesn't stop with me being a mom.

And that's where I was thinking like, me being a mom is just my title.

Being a mom that Deborah House showed me that I'm more than just a mom.

I'm also Octavia.

I'm a woman.

I can be successful and be a mom.

I could be creative and be a mom.

It just opened up a whole bunch of opportunities for myself.

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