The Mary Jane Program offers an expectant woman that ‘little reprieve that allows her to get her life back on track’

By Patrick Downes

The two women could not be more different, yet they ended up happily in the same place. Forty-four-year-old Ramona is a high-spirited Chinese-Hawaiian-Portuguese woman who grew up in Kaneohe, graduated from Castle High School, and worked in Waikiki up until last November. Soft-spoken “Sue,” 26, was a government official in Taegu, South Korea, before she came to Hawaii on a student visa in January.

Both are now living at Catholic Charities Hawaii’s Mary Jane

Brief history of the Mary Jane Program This year the Mary Jane Program celebrates the 30th anniversary of the building of its first residential facility. Early 1970s: Lay Catholic businessman Robert Pearson opens up his home on Maui as a place of refuge for pregnant teens and women who had nowhere else go. 1974: Pearson moves to Oahu and opens the Mary Jane Center, named after his late wife, in the former orphanage at St. Anthony Retreat Center in Kalihi Valley. The Diocese of Honolulu becomes sponsors of the center, which is run by the Sisters of the Good Shepherd. 1976: The first residential facility is built and opened at St. Anthony Retreat Center. 1985: Catholic Charities Hawaii acquires administration of the Mary Jane Center. 1995: The Sisters of the Good Shepherd handed over operations of the center to Catholic Charities staff. The center is renamed the Mary Jane Program to reflect its expanded services, which include counseling, adoption and abstinence education. 1996: The Mary Jane Program creates a specialized service for girls under the age 18, placing them in individual licensed foster family “host homes.” 1999: The Mary Jane Home, the residential group home as it is called today, moves to its present location, a renovated house in Kailua.

Home in Kailua. Their pregnancies brought these two dissimilar lives together. Their stays at the home are temporary, but their experience there will leave a permanent impact. They shared this important slice of their lives with the Hawaii Catholic Herald on July 31.

For the unprepared, pregnancy intrudes as a complete life-changing situation on an uncompromising nine-month timetable. Biology doesn’t wait for lives to be in order, for a job to offer itself, for graduation day, for relationships to mature or for housing to materialize.

For those without supporting families and fathers and stable situations, what is supposed to be a time of joy and anticipation can collapse into a period of enormous stress. The Mary Jane Program supplies the support that eases the stress and brings back the joy.

Ramona

Joy was written all over the face of Ramona Williams. She is thrilled to be pregnant. It is her first time, something she never thought would happen at her age. The child, a boy due Sept. 13, will be named Makana, she said, Hawaiian for “gift.”

She didn’t feel this way seven months ago. The timing couldn’t have been worse.

Ramona had been a self-sufficient, independent woman most of her adult life, working in respectable jobs in the tourist industry in Waikiki, living in a Nuuanu apartment.

But, in her words, she “messed up” last November and found herself unemployed. This came after two years of residing with her boyfriend in a van in Kakaako Park.

Her pregnancy was the kick she needed to turn her life around. “I took my pre-natal vitamins the very day I got the news,” she said.

She also said aloha to her van companion and began to seek help through a few downtown social services, one of which put her in contact with the Mary Jane Program.

She had never heard of the place. But she filled out the application, completed the necessary medical requirements, and waited for the phone call. Within a week, she was picked up and given her room. That was in March.

Ramona has since been busy preparing for her new life. She encountered an unexpected bump in the road when she learned she had developed gestational diabetes. But she is up to the challenge. Her new glucose monitor, timer, notepad and insulin pen syringe are lined up in a row on her dresser. She “eats healthy” and injects insulin four times a day to keep her sugar levels in check.

Chores around the house earn her coupons that she redeems at The Boutique, a maternal and baby-supply thrift shop exclusively for Mary Jane cliental at St. Anthony Parish a few blocks away. Her small closet is filling up with disposable diapers and other baby things. A stroller, car seat and a portable playpen are stacked next to a crib in which plush animals sit patiently awaiting its future occupant.

Also in the crib is a nearly-completed blanket Ramona is making for Makana.

She is arranging her future as well. She has reconnected with one of her sisters and other members of her extended family, processed her welfare papers, got on the waiting list for affordable housing, and has lined up a job through a former co-worker.

She has even accumulated the “towels, dishes, curtains” that will be a part of her new life.

“I’ve got my boxes taped up, ready to go,” she said.

Sue

When Sue (not her real name) learned she was pregnant in Korea last year, she thought about an abortion. “For one week.” She decided against it. Instead, she and her boyfriend would move to Hawaii, away from their families who could not welcome the child of an unwed mother. But her boyfriend backed out of the plan, leaving Sue alone in a foreign country with a baby on the way.

In Hawaii since January on a student visa and attending an English language school, Sue first roomed in a downtown Honolulu apartment with another Korean student as her belly swelled. At seven months pregnant, she looked for help on the Internet and found the Mary Jane Program.

She called and, unsure of her broken English, simply said, “Hello, I want to go there.”

The next day she was filling out the application forms.

On June 10, she gave birth to Ellie at Kapiolani Medical Center.

The baby fussed and cried as Sue recounted her story in the comfortable living room of the Mary Jane Home. The mom of two months was gentle and patient, soothing the child who finally calmed down and dosed off.

The slender Korean woman was particularly grateful that the Mary Jane Program offered her the services of a “doula,” a woman experienced in childbirth who provides physical, emotional and informational support before, during and just after childbirth.

In her quiet English, which was actually quite good, Sue explained that she had her own “ideal plan” for where she goes from here. But her future is far from determined.

The Mary Jane Home allows a mother and child to stay for four months after birth, although it is not a hard and fast rule. With only two months before she has to move out on her own, Sue still has to find a place to live and a way to support herself and Ellie. As a foreign student, her options and sources of assistance are limited. She is living off her savings.

Her father won’t give permission to bring the child back to Taegu and Ellie’s U.S. citizenship could create additional problems in Korea.

She wants to remain in Hawaii. She wants to complete her English education. She wants to get a work visa. Catholic Charities will help, but the going will be tough.

“I try to be strong, but I am tired of being strong,” she said with a weary smile. “But what other choice do I have? I have to face my reality.”

Gently rocking Ellie back and forth, Sue said her future decisions will be determined by what is “the best thing for her, not for me.”

‘It is hard when they leave’

Rebecca Cuba has been the Mary Jane Program’s on-site educator and program assistant since 1978. She lives on the grounds in an apartment separate from the house.

She has seen hundreds of women come and go.

It is not that difficult to be admitted into the program, Cuba said. Prospective residents must fill out a four to five-page application, submit a doctor’s confirmation of pregnancy, test negative for TB, and be interviewed by the residential program coordinator, Pam Ito.

Ito, who was named coordinator a year ago, supervises the staff, coordinates events, conducts intake interviews and discusses applications with her co-workers.

The six-woman house is usually at full capacity.

The women are not charged rent, but pay for classes, supplies and food to the extent that they are able. No one is refused entry if they cannot pay. What they can afford, based on their income, is determined in the admissions process.

As one of three full-time staff, Cuba herself teaches or arranges for classes the residents must take on childbirth, nutrition, infant care, healthy relationships, cooking, finances and other topics. She also recruits volunteers who help the women with transportation, offer respite periods by watching the newborns, and assist in other ways.

The house is not “baby-proofed” for crawling toddlers, which is one of the reasons mother and child must leave after four months. The program, however, will not eject anyone before she has a place to go.

Departing can be as wrenching for the Mary Jane staff as it is for the new mother.

The Mary Jane Home offers a woman that “little reprieve, little break … that allows her to get her life back on track,” she said. But leaving is “one of the biggest concerns.”

“There is a lot of support here,” Cuba said, “but when they leave, it is hard for everybody.”

“Rent is very expensive and there is limited assisted housing,” she said.

But a lot of women succeed, often by supporting each other. “Many girls stay friends afterwards,” Cuba said. Some women get an apartment together.

Other Catholic Charities programs offer follow up services, she said. Counselors have helped women acquire everything from diapers to college scholarships.

Lindsey Schwartz is the full-time coordinator of the Mary Jane Program for teens. Girls under 18 do not live at the home but are sent to host homes. One problem Mary Jane is now experiencing, according to Schwartz, is the lack of host families. The program only has two. It could use more.

Teens are referred to the Mary Jane host home program through the court system, foster home situations, schools, addiction centers, and sometimes by their parents, Schwartz said.

The teens are required to continue school and, if possible, participate in the Mary Jane Program’s classes.

The Mary Jane staff also includes part time education specialist Roxanne Marcum. Yolanda Hayes, the program’s community pregnancy worker, counsels women from her Catholic Charities office downtown.

Finding fundi ng is difficult

Danny Morishige, Mary Jane’s program director since 1996, estimates a total of 800 women and 650 babies have been served by the program.

Why 150 fewer babies? Many women leave the program before they gave birth, Morishige explained. “People come to their senses, a teen goes back home to her parents, there is a reconciliation.”

That’s in keeping with the program’s aim, he said, to move women from a crisis situation to a stable, permanent one.

Occasionally a woman applies who is “not suitable for group living,” but that’s rare, he said.

The Mary Jane Program is a unique service, Morishige said, the only one of its kind in Hawaii.

For that reason, finding funding is difficult. There’s just not a lot of government money earmarked for a condition that lasts only nine months, he said.

The program’s annual budget is $300,000. “We’re always looking for funding,” Morishige said.

“People don’t stay pregnant,” he explained, so the need goes away. Nevertheless, while someone is pregnant, it is a “really vulnerable, important period of time” with enormous consequences.

The state’s answer is simply to put a woman on welfare, he said. But single pregnant girls and women need more than money. They require support, sympathy, encouragement and guidance.

“That’s our goal,” he said, “to provide a home atmosphere so that they can basically be stable, so that they can make plans for the future.”

“Instead of being in crisis mode, worrying about where they are going to stay, what they are going to eat, we give them and their babies a good start.”

The need is increasing,” Morishige said. “We are serving more challenging clients with multiple problems.”

The program’s clientele are no longer wayward teenagers who have embarrassed their families, but real victims of serious domestic violence with no family support and few resources.

A lot of financial and other support comes from Catholic and community groups, Morishige said. An early and consistent supporter has been the Knights of Columbus who raised $90,000 to build the first Mary Jane Home, and who continue to raise money and provide maintenance and other services to the residence itself.

Other supporting groups include the Notre Dame Club, the Catholic Women’s Guild and Friends of Catholic Charities, community organizations such as the Sony Open and the Kaiser Foundation, individuals like Henry and Colleen Wong, Virgil and Carmella Blank, and Paul and Karen Chinen, and many volunteers. Neighboring St. Anthony Parish supplies office and storage space.

He said the program, located on a residential Kailua street, has pretty much allayed early concerns that increased traffic and crying babies would turn the residence into a bothersome neighbor. An experienced on-site program assistant keeps things orderly, air conditioning allows the new mothers to shut their windows, everyone goes to bed early and there is never even the occasional party.

“We’ve been really fortunate,” Morishige said. “There have been staff changes over time, but everybody has been very dedicated to the program. That’s why the program has been successful.”

And gratifying. Hundreds of women and their children have moved on to decent and happy lives because of the Mary Jane Program. It’s good to know “we’ve been a part of that,” Morishige said.