A decade of partnership in the pregnancy help movement continues to be celebrated in Paterson, N.J.
Lighthouse Pregnancy Center and Renew Life Center had joined forces in 2015 to combat the poverty issue among families in New Jersey’s third largest city.
Lighthouse Pregnancy Center has been operating in New Jersey since 1984. Debbie Provencher has been with the ministry for 20 years and serves as the executive director in Hackensack, Hawthorne, Wayne, and Paterson.
The Lighthouse Pregnancy Center began expanding into these cities as the need was visibly evident, Provencher said, and Paterson was definitely a location in need.
“It has drugs, homelessness, gangs,” she said. “There are few places that have mass transit. It’s a very urban place.”
As the pregnancy center began to see the need in 2013-2014, a small group of women were answering a call to help the poverty-stricken families simultaneously.
These four women who attended a summit in 2013 felt the desire to start a Pregnancy Center Plus. The ladies each had a background in pregnancy center work and had grown up in poverty themselves.
They prayed and faithfully answered the call and created Renew Life Center, the mission of which is “to help families overcome generational poverty by providing life-changing programs that lead to economic self-sufficiency, healthy relationships and restored dignity.”
[Click here to subscribe to Pregnancy Help News!]
Meanwhile, the needs in Paterson were being made more evident to Lighthouse Pregnancy Center as a completely separate group of individuals contacted the center and offered an ultrasound machine through the Knights of Columbus – for a future Paterson center.
Marisol Rodriguez with Renew Life called Provencher directly. She expressed her desire for a Pregnancy Plus program which would not only offer the services of pregnancy centers, but it would have an extension of support to help women learn about why they are in poverty and help them get out of that socioeconomic status. Rodriguez had found a curriculum, Bridges out of Poverty, and suggested it be used in the program.
Provencher said the two women prayed together and concluded to be a team.
“We decided Lighthouse would do the pregnancy center part and I told Marisol ‘You do the Plus part. We’ll share the same existing space.’”
Informally they call the collaboration the Paterson Partners for Life Center.
Provencher and Rodriguez met with other non-profits in the area to let them know of their plans. Lighthouse Pregnancy Center leased a 2,600 square foot space and allowed Renew Life to sublease a third of that space.
“We truly collaborated to see their vision prosper,” Provencher said.
Provencher said it was important to allow Renew Life to “be their own,” and not limit them to only serving clients from the Lighthouse Pregnancy Center.
“We really opened this location together, and the Lighthouse clients benefit,” she said, adding 80 percent of Renew Life clients are also Lighthouse clients.
The facility has a separate office space for Renew Life. The pregnancy center space offers a childcare room and multipurpose room.
The doors opened in August 2015.
Renew has increased its programs. Initially the main program was the Bridges Out of Poverty. They also added Getting Ahead in a Just Getting By World.
Recently a Spanish version of this curriculum has been implemented as well as Jobs for Life, Money and Me, and an English as a Second Language program.
“The goal is to help families thrive, not just survive, after choosing life,” Provencher said.
A testimonial video of the collaboration is available on the Paterson Partners for Life website or on YouTube.
Rodriguez said in the video as a former pregnancy center worker looking at the desperate needs of young women in poverty she knew “the need is far greater than what a pregnancy center can meet.”
Tweet This: The goal is to help families thrive, not just survive, after choosing life - Director of pregnancy help-anti-poverty collaboration.
The pregnancy center often serves as the initiator by helping newly pregnant women choose life and find parenting resources. They then extend an invitation to Renew Life to help them escape the generational cycle of poverty. It can also be a reverse situation in which a Renew Life client may find herself pregnant and can walk across the hall to the pregnancy center for support.
Since it began in 2015 there have been 164 graduates of its 24 Getting Ahead workshops.
The YouTube video includes a testimony from “Eleni” who said after she became pregnant a nurse asked her, “where do you see yourself two to three years from now?”
“I couldn’t answer that,” Eleni said.
Rodriguez said because of the Renew Life program Eleni went back to school and found a stable job.
“Renew to me is my cheerleader,” Eleni said. “They motivate me.”
Thirty-eight percent of the graduates of Renew Life find employment, Rodriguez said. As many as 66 percent continue with further education. And 62 percent reduce their dependence on government resources.
Rodriguez authored a book about the journey of starting the Renew Life program and its successes in 2018. It is called Beyond Her Yes, and she discusses the part of the story on YouTube.
In the YouTube audio clip, Rodriguez shared stories of clients before Renew Life was founded, and she shared how she discovered there was so much more she wanted to do to help women after they choose life.
Provencher said pregnancy center workers in high-poverty areas are often wanting to find a way to provide more support and help clients remove the victim mentality while thriving in their confidence.
“When you live in a community with a high poverty rate, there’s this instability. You feel so overwhelmed by it and you want to help,” Provencher said.
Provencher said the pairing of these two passionate ministries is pivotal in renewing hope for women in the poverty-stricken city of Paterson. She noted they cannot do it alone and have goals to continue to raise funds and build the program.
“We are better together,” she said.
