The Independent‘s recent front-page piece on trafficking in Santa Barbara stayed with me, because the biggest risk factor isn’t usually the one person picture. It’s vulnerability that can look like poverty, isolation, no one checking in, and unstable housing. That’s the door traffickers walk through. It’s also the door a lot of pregnant and postpartum mothers in this county are standing in, alone, right now, and their vulnerable children are standing there with them.
Villa Majella is the only maternity home in Santa Barbara County built specifically for pregnant and new mothers and their babies. About half of the mothers we serve have experienced domestic violence, a horrible reality that puts them and their children at elevated risk for trafficking and exploitation. As a nonprofit 501(c)(3), we don’t take state or federal funding nor do we discriminate based on immigration status. We are a small group of women, many of us mothers ourselves, holding this grassroots organization together one phone call, one doctor’s appointment, one diaper run at a time, by giving mothers holistic support and a real path to stable, safe housing.
A mother came to us once nine months pregnant, with no shoes on her feet. Barefoot at our front door. Most of the mothers who find us don’t need something extraordinary. They need someone standing between them and despair, someone or something that can offer real hope. We offer more than hope. We offer tangible care, specialized programs of support, resources that moms and children actually need, and the dignity of a home: a clean bed, a hot shower, and peace. We are often the ones holding their hands through labor and early postpartum, helping them settle in, and making sure they have had a proper meal and are getting the medical care they need…