by Richard Prior
Staff Writer
The young woman was wandering the streets of Springfield, sobbing.
She said she was from Arkansas. She’d bought a bus ticket for as far away as her money would take her. Jacksonville was the end of the line.
Her name was Javae, and she said she was 19. It was the name she was accustomed to but not necessarily the one she’d been given at birth. That’s when her mother gave her up.
She had no identification, no clothes, no money. She said she had been raped by her foster father. And she was pregnant.
An Operation New Hope foreman brought her to FreshMinistries on North Laura Street that day last June.
“Without shelter, she would have slept on the streets that night,” said Suzanne Yack, FreshMinistries’ communications director. “And who knows what manner of predator would have found her?”
FreshMinistries primarily addresses social issues and does not provide direct aid.
“We help other agencies, and we initiate programs in partnership with agencies that have case workers,” said Yack. “We are not doing the bottom level safety net stuff.”
That didn’t stop the staff from doing what it could, working the phones, searching for an agency that could give Javae the help she needed. It took between two to three hours.
“Some of these agencies are pretty specific about what they will and will not do,” said Yack. “Javae called one place and told them her story. It took about 45 minutes. Then they said no. I just thought that was hard for her to go through, having to tell somebody one more time her story of being raped and running away from her home.
“Here’s a girl who is in a real crisis, and we are frustrating her by asking her to make calls to places that aren’t going to take her because they weren’t the appropriate places.”
The experience convinced FreshMinistries that there had to be a better way.
“The process really opened our eyes to how difficult it is to place people in crisis,” Yack said. “We had available to us little manuals that were out of date. You go on line, and the information is out of date. It became real clear that we needed a better guide.”
Kimberly Cobbins, a FreshMinistries summer intern, spent a couple months researching all the agencies that actually deal with crises.
She came up with more than 100 agencies, organizations, programs and hotlines that are included in the resource guide, titled “Javae’s Book.” The information includes addresses, phone numbers, the services provided and eligibility.
The Dalton Agency donated the design. The Times-Union printed 450 copies. Cobbins has moved on to the Hester Group public relations firm.
FreshMinistries is distributing the booklet to the agencies listed and to the locations downtown that deal first-hand with crises.
Yack sees “Javae’s Book” as a time-saving, efficient way to tighten the weave in the safety net.
“We want to get it to the receptionist or the person at the front door, the person who answers these kinds of questions, because they’re probably doing the same kind of thing we were doing,” said Yack.
Those with access to a computer may also go to the FreshMinistries website and download the information in a plain text format.
There’s a likelihood that some agencies have been omitted. Yack expects to hear from those who were so they can be included in the next edition, which may be printed in a year or so.
FreshMinistries began distributing “Javae’s Book” the last week of February and is already receiving calls of appreciation and requests for more copies. The book is free, but it could be invaluable when immediate answers are needed to crisis questions. For a copy, call 355-0000.
When she went to the program at Circle of Love Ministries, Javae was hesitant, unsure that a Bible-based ministry was what she had in mind.
“The important thing is she was safe,” said Yack. “She was still in the runaway mode, running on adrenaline. They don’t think about the future. Just survive.
“With I-10 ending here, and I-95 going through here, we see a lot of people with that particular profile. It’s sort of like, ‘I’m going to go until the road ends.’
“You can almost see what’s happening to her in that next scenario. And it costs all of us.”