Some undergraduate degree programs schedule a big project for your final semester. The ETSU Public Health Program does just that with an internship opportunity to close out your studies. As I complete my Public Health degree, I have been given the excellent chance to spend my 400-hour internship with the Hope Center in Greeneville, Tennessee.
The Hope Center lies in neighboring Greene County, where you can sometimes find me driving after my Tuesday/Thursday Greek class. As stated in their mission, the Hope Center, as a branch of Free Will Baptist Family Ministries, is “a Christ-centered pregnancy resource center serving Greene County by empowering individuals to make healthy, life-affirming choices regarding pregnancy and parenting.”
The services we offer are entirely free of charge and include giving out supplies for infant care like diapers, wipes and clothes. We also teach classes on parenting-related topics, provide pregnancy tests and ultrasounds, offer counseling, dispense informational fliers on various subjects and lend out books on parenting, breastfeeding and healthy relationships from our library to be read in exchange for supplies. Additionally, we provide maternal supplies, such as maternity clothes, nursing bras and breast pumps.
I have been involved in a variety of experiences there, whether that be writing grants, teaching and translating for a Spanish parenting class, teaching an English class to Spanish-speakers, as well as assisting with other classes, editing forms, taking inventories of donations, meeting members of the community, participating in meetings and other tasks like the occasional childcare. I have probably enjoyed Spanish classes on parenting and English classes the most because I get to put my Spanish to good use, which is usually the highlight of my day. However, I think my work that has the most potential for changing lives has been grant writing.
I have been working on grants for a maternity home the Hope Center is currently building next door. We are really excited about the home, a place to house women who are pregnant and homeless as well as teach them life skills to enable them to be effective parents and live successful lives. The home – affectionately named “Honeysuckle Studios” – holds great potential both to save lives when mothers choose to parent as well as improve the well-being of whole families.
Lisa Shipley and Sharon Hodgens – the Hope Center’s two employees I work with – shared with me their thoughts and feelings about the new maternity home. Now that she has nearly finished her long journey with the Hope Center, Director Hodgens told me about the origin of the idea for the maternity home, which I consider to be her brainchild.
“When I came to work here, [the Hope Center] was my dream,” Hodgens said. “Then after I came to the Hope Center, I was actually getting calls of girls needing homes, and it just broke my heart – just seeing the need… in Greene County.”
In her own words, she saw “the need for young women to be in a Christian environment” while feeling a special burden for women around her who felt destitute.
Hope Center Administrator Shipley said the purpose the maternity home hopes to accomplish is to “provide a safe environment where women who choose to give life to their child and to parent or to choose life for their child and make an adoption plan – a place where they can live and thrive and have opportunities for a successful future.”
While it has been exciting watching the walls go up on the maternity home, we are reminded that there is much more still to be done, including preparations for pulling all the program’s pieces together and funding. Yet we trust that God will provide our needs in His perfect time.
In the meantime, though, these ladies I’ve been working with for the last seven weeks have been excellent models as they help the Hope Center show love to women like I have never seen done before. It’s been so remarkable.
To wrap this all up, let me just say that during my internship I have not only gained experience working in the field, but I am learning how to serve people. And at the end of the day, that’s what really matters.
