LEWISTON — Last fall a group of determined women decided to take on something they weren’t sure they could do: Keep a downtown drop-in center for poor, marginalized women open.

With an annual budget goal of $57,000, keeping the doors open meant raising thousands when budgets were being slashed and many had little to give.

One year later, they’ve done it. The downtown Center for Wisdom’s Women at 97 Blake St. is far from solvent, but is open and growing.

In the last year the center:

• Began opening five days a week, up from three.

• Has one paid staffer, an executive director, and 20 volunteers who function as unpaid staff.

• Has more women stopping in for help; the center logged 1,214 visits and 56 new guests.

• Has expanded help with new support groups, education programs and a new meditation room. The room features “The Three Marys” painting, and is used every day for meditation, sharing and praying. Tacked on a board are notes asking for prayers for someone who’s been diagnosed with cancer, someone who underwent surgery, a woman’s son and daughter. “Mental illness runs in our family,” the note states.

Marguerite Stapleton, who serves on the center’s board and is vice president of Mission Effectiveness at St. Mary’s Medical Center, said she’s amazed the center stayed open. “I think it’s a miracle.”

For years Catholic nuns, the Daughters of Wisdom, ran the center. In 2008 the sisters announced they were closing in June due to lack of funds.

Supporters wondered: “Can we take this on? What would make it possible?” Executive Director Klara Tammany said. “Nobody wanted to let it go. So we stepped out and said, ‘We’re going to open in October.'”

They opened in November, for three mornings a week, staffed by volunteers. One of them is Noella Cote, who came to the center “low and depressed,” suffering from multiple sclerosis and contemplating suicide. She turned her life around, she said, knowing others cared.

With the nuns gone, women dropping in needed someone to talk to. A small group of “companions,” four women, was organized. The companions “are a non-anxious listening presence,” Tammany said. They’re there “when someone has a heartache or a worry or needs someone to talk to.”

The goal of the center is the same as when the nuns ran it, a sacred and safe place that supports and empowers women. But Tammany is focused on doing more to empower women. She’s organized workshops by Pine Tree Legal and Visible Community on tenant’s rights, and healthy eating on a budget by the Nutrition Center of Maine.

She hopes to start a food addict recovery group and an Alcoholics Anonymous group for women. “There are lots of AA groups, but not one just for women. For some women it’s hard to be in a mixed group.”

The center wouldn’t be open, she said, if it weren’t for a few big donors, the Daughters of Wisdom who gave $10,000, a $5,000 grant from the Maine Community Foundation, a private family foundation grant, and an “angel,” an anonymous woman who pays the $1,250 monthly rent. “I know the woman. I’m not telling,” Tammany said with a smile.

Other help comes from the downtown Trinity Episcopal Church, which serves as the center’s partner, some 100 people last year responded to requests for donations, and the women who come in for help, become volunteers then help each other.

When one woman was recently hospitalized, others brought her food and provided rides. “They are building community,” Tammany said.

Lesley Sullivan came to the center several years ago at the recommendation of a social worker. She was shy, had no friends and no place to go. Sullivan became a volunteer and today greets people who come in the door.

“My job is to make people feel welcome,” she said. “It’s what we do here.”

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Bonnie Gammon of Lewiston meditates in the new meditation room at The Center for Wisdom’s Women in Lewiston on Thursday morning. In the last year, supporters have been able to keep the center’s doors
open by raising thousands of dollars. 

Klara Tammany, executive director of
The Center for Wisdom’s Women in Lewiston, talks with women in the new meditation room under the painting of “The Three Mary’s.”
In the last year, supporters have been able to keep the center’s doors
open despite a tough economy.