Womenade SLO is back. How the group is once again helping those in need
As October turned to November, Terry Mack was put in a difficult situation when he started experiencing sharp pains in his legs.
The 61-year-old San Luis Obispo resident said it wasn’t long until he was kept home from his two jobs — one as a maintenance worker by day, and another as an overnight shelter worker at 40 Prado Homeless Services Center. That’s when he realized the burning pain in his legs was shingles that had become septic over time.
After a nine-day stay in the hospital, Mack said he was cleared to return to his apartment, but was unable to work.
As his extended illness continued to keep him out of work, Mack said he was facing a month without rent money — potentially worsening his already difficult situation.
That’s when he reached out to Ilene Brill, a Community Action Partnership of San Luis Obispo housing stabilization specialist, and asked her what he could do to avert potentially falling into homelessness.
“I reached out to her, telling her that I would lose my home if I couldn’t receive some type of funding until I got well enough to return to work,” Mack said. “She initially told me about several places that help with housing to prevent homelessness, and she came back to me with Womenade, which she was going to put an application in to receive funding.”
Within a week, thanks to Brill’s “relentless” efforts, Mack had $600 in hand to cover the majority of his $870 rent in a shared home — enough, along with some additional help from another organization, to keep him in his house another month, he said.
Brill, who works to prevent evictions where possible in her role at the Community Action Partnership of San Luis Obispo, has been a part of many similar conversations both through her work with CAPSLO and as a referring agent for Womenade SLO, an organization dedicated to providing quick, direct aid to people in need.
As a referring agent, Brill can hear the needs of her clients, ask if they need help and notify Womenade SLO, allowing for some of the fastest response times of any nonprofit in San Luis Obispo County, she said.
“They help with a wide variety of needs,” Brill said. “The last person that I applied for assistance for was for rental assistance, and they had a check written and in the mail within a day, which, for a nonprofit to respond so rapidly, is an amazing thing.”
Referring agents connect clients to resources quickly
Womenade SLO executive director Elaine Stewart said her branch of Womenade — which serves the city of San Luis Obispo — rose from her mother Sandy Richardson’s involvement with the countywide Womenade organization.
At the start of this year, Stewart felt it was time for her to pick up the reigns and continue her mother’s work, relaunching Womenade SLO in April to serve her community.
Richardson, a retired Laguna Middle School English teacher who now volunteers part-time for the new Womenade, started the organization in San Luis Obispo in 2003, growing it into an all-volunteer registered nonprofit by November 2009, she said.
Womenade was founded out of a desire to help students during her time as a teacher, Richardson said.
“I read an article in ‘Real Simple’ magazine about a pediatrician in Washington D.C., who was trying to help her patients by herself and couldn’t, so she invited seven of her friends to a potluck at her house, and they brought $35, which was what it cost to go out to dinner back in the day,” Richardson said. “They pulled their money, and she used that to help her patients, and when she ran out of money, she just had another potluck, so I said, ‘OK, I can do that.’”
By the time Richardson closed Womenade due to health complications in 2019, the organization had collected and redistributed a total of more than $1.1 million, she said.
“I always say this is grassiest grassroots organization ever,” Richardson said. “All of the funds were coming from small donors, people, not big grants,”
Richardson said she’s proud to see her daughter carrying on the work she started.
“Elaine felt it on her heart that she really wanted to make it happen again, and it was a lot of tears when she came in and said, ‘Mom, I’m gonna start Womenade again,’” Richardson said. “Somebody needed diapers, and we got some diapers together, and that was kind of the impetus of doing it.”
Like its predecessor organizations, Womenade SLO is intentionally low-barrier, with referring agents such as Brill providing the initial vetting of prospective clients.
“Our mission is to kind of fill the gaps, so if there’s a government agency that can do something, great, but a lot of times, there’s huge gaps in timing,” Stewart said. “Maybe something will cover (the client’s need), but it’s gonna take six months, and the need will be passed by then.”
What makes Womenade’s aid so unique is the wide range of needs it fulfills, Stewart said.
Through Womenade’s referring agents, clients can request up to around $600 for help with anything from partial rent to replacing essential documents to transportation, she said. Since its relaunch, Womenade SLO has fundraised more than $30,000, completing 21 service requests in October alone, she said.
Sometimes, help can be purchasing life-saving medication for a client, she said. Other times, it can be buying a teenager a bike so they can get to school independently.
“Just two days ago, I had a pastor reach out to me,” Stewart said. “Somebody was about to give birth, and there was no room in the shelter, and we got them a hotel room.”
Few forms of direct aid are available in SLO
Referring agents are typically part of an organization that deals directly with people who need resources, including teachers, medical professionals, social workers and nonprofit staff like Brill.
She said across the county, there’s a higher need for quick, stopgap aid than ever as cost of living continues to outpace wages.
That’s not to say that there’s no help available for people who need it, she said; St. Vicent de Paul offers some financial aid each month, Jewish Family Services offers around $200 in aid and SLO City Church offers around $600 a month for one-time requests.
Other Womenade-adjacent organizations — which are separate nonprofits from Womenade SLO — such as South SLO County Womenade, North County Neighboraid and Womenade Estero Bay also offer similar services, Brill said.
Still, the need for direct aid is high, and requires constant effort from referring agents and Womenade SLO’s volunteers to stay on top of requests, Brill said.
Stewart added that as federal cuts to some homelessness programs continue to roll out, Womenade SLO is already witnessing a “crescendo” in higher-value aid requests as the existing homeless services become overwhelmed.
That means it needs more money, and more people serving as referring agents, with a preference for volunteers with a current or previous background in roles that have plenty of contact with people in need, Stewart said.
“Our little tagline is ‘Urgent, essential,’” Stewart said. “How is this urgent? How is this essential?”
Womenade SLO will continue fundraising to meet these needs as the newest iteration of the organization approaches its first full year of service, and accepts donations through its website.
Individuals interested in joining Womenade SLO’s network of referring agents can apply through the nonprofit’s website.
