At Our House, it’s the children who get people choked up. It’s the baby blissfully being rocked or a little girl, with tongue stuck out, concentrating on putting a puzzle together with a gentle prompt from a volunteer.
Most of these children have been neglected and some abused, but today they are safe with a staff member or with a supervised parent who is trying to get well and learn how to be responsible.
That’s the way it was when I first visited Our House six years ago, interviewed the dynamic CEO, Georgia Mjartan, and some of her staff and patients for my free publication, “One Day at a Time.”
Our House has grown since then which makes it an even more valuable resource for Little Rock as we face a resurgence of gangs peddling drugs and inciting violence manifesting itself in a night club shooting in July that sent 25 victims to the hospital.
Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson and Little Rock mayor Mark Stodala are taking steps to deal with the gang threat, which includes investing more in law enforcement. They can be thankful that Little Rock has the hospitals, treatment facilities and proactive evangelical churches and special resources like the Wolfe Street Center offering multiple 12 Step meetings and Our House to help meet the challenge
Little Rock is not new to gang warfare. Twenty years ago, the city participated along with 15 other communities in a project underwritten by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation called “Fighting Back which was designed to find a way to respond to the gang threat. Regrettably, the gangs are back. And with a vengeance.
The response to the drug threat 20 years ago was moderately successful, but now, over the past two decades, hardly anyone can remember the details and the gangs are back. The program in Little Rock and 15 other communities across the country was fairly successful but, certainly in Little Rock, people eventually moved on and pretty much ignored the growing threat.
In her book, “Fighting Back, the first eight years. Mobilizing people and communities in the fight against substance abuse” Barbara Thompson provides invaluable commentary on the program including the following three key points.
Why people use drugs
“Individuals working in the field of substance abuse often have widely divergent theories about why people begin using drugs. Is it a symptom of family breakdown or an impoverished spiritual life? Is it a refuge from the pain of every day existence or a natural consequence of a culture that encourages sensation seeking? The strategy a community develops and implements is dependent on which particular theories dominate their group discussions about substance abuse.”
Short-term initiatives versus long-term strategy
“In any planning group there is a tension between short-term initiatives such as a youth appreciation festival and long-term strategies such as after-school programs. The short-term initiatives are easier to implement and provide immediate benefits. However they are difficult to repeat year after year. Longer term strategies are more complicated, more risky and often contain long–term financial implications for a community.”
Demand reduction versus supply reduction
“Although fighting back was labeled as a demand reduction program, in every community supply reduction strategies competed for program time and money. Supply reduction strategies (crack house elimination, reducing youth access to alcohol and developing stronger enforcement of beverage control laws, etc.) were more popular and easier to define and implement. For example, while an entire community might be in favor of getting rid of crack houses a program offering job training for high school drop outs was likely to be controversial.”
Our House, a “demand reduction program,” is a place where homeless families and individuals can come and build a new life by dealing with their mental health and addiction problems and learning how to live in the real world. When they leave, most will have a plan for dealing with emotional and substance abuse problems, a strategy for living and a bank account.
When I first visited, the record showed that 80 percent of those who leave Our House move up in housing, 71 percent have savings and 63 percent have full time jobs.
Mjartan emphasizes that Our House. “is not a homeless shelter, and it’s not charity. It’s a community.”
Mjartan was recruited to serve on the board of Our House 13 years ago, at the age of 23, by Our House advisory board member and philanthropist, Beth Coulson. Two years later, the board named Mjartan executive director
Mjartan immediately added programs to help clients improve their lives including free child care and preschool summer and after school programs, on site drug and alcohol treatment and programs to teach job skills, job-search skills and basic adult education. She also brought in volunteers to help in areas such as financial literacy, parenting and dealing with domestic violence.
Melissa
Melissa Farrell, 42, a onetime drug addicted mother in recovery at Our House, had sixty four days of clean time when I visited and was a good example of how the program works.
Melissa came to Our House during the summer of 2011 bringing with her two of her children, aged seven and ten. When I visited, they were living together in a small but cozy bedroom with a TV set. They used a communal bathroom, and she prepared their meals in a kitchen all the mothers share.
The previous summer, Melissa and her children lived in a filthy and dangerous “meth” house in downtown Little Rock barely a mile away. She herself was using drugs but had a part-time job. Still she didn’t dare leave her children alone in a wretched place overrun with people she describes as “animals.”
Sitting in the kitchen after the bustle of lunch hour, she talks about a life dominated by drug abuse and its consequences, and gently wipes her eyes with a tissue in the telling of it. Her story, while somewhat different from others in the details was otherwise all too common.
Melissa, who also had a 25-year old son and a grandson, was raised by a grandmother who may have been well meaning but was limited in her ability to help.
Melissa found alcohol at age 12, soon graduated to stronger drugs, dropped out of school, sold drugs on the street, spent time in several jails and prison, took up with men who abused and abandoned her and their children.
Melissa had been at Our House for four months. She was working toward an outside job. On this cold February day she sits in a warming hut greeting visitors driving up for the monthly open house tour.
When the parking duties are over she goes back to the building where her apartment is for our interview.
“You know,” she says after talking about her drug abuse and multiple mistakes in life, “since I’ve been here, I’m beginning to learn how to go about things.”
She had always had a faith in God in varying degrees, she says, but she had never really understood how the game of life is played.
“It’s all about making good choices and taking responsibility,” she says. “Nobody is going to mess up my life but me. What happened to me is not something somebody else did.”
Part of what she wants to do is raise her children better.
“If I don’t tell my son how to live,” she says, “who will?”
On the way back to her job at the parking lot, she stops to pick up a cigarette butt, puts it in a nearby receptacle, then quietly turns and says with a smile and tears in her eyes, “You know, last Sunday at my church my family filled up a whole pew.”
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