You can be part of keeping life-saving services available

Every year, Strengthen Our Sisters, a shelter for battered women and children, receives an outpouring of calls from kind-hearted individuals eager to provide gifts for the children.

While we deeply appreciate these thoughtful gestures, we ask those who celebrate Christmas to reflect on what Jesus would truly want.

If children receive 20 pairs of gloves but lack electricity in their homes, they may end up sleeping on the boxes their presents arrived in.

Similarly, during Hanukkah, if children receive gifts but have no electricity in their living spaces, they too will face the same harsh reality, seeking shelter on the boxes instead of in a warm, lit home.

This season, along with thoughtful gifts, we ask for pledges of

financial support to help cover essential utilities like electricity

and heat.

Without these, families may face freezing temperatures, broken pipes, and uninhabitable homes.

Let us come together to meet the deeper, critical needs of these

families and bring lasting light, warmth, and hope into their lives.

Thank you for your compassion and understanding.

Your input is needed now.

Strengthen Our Sisters is the only service in this area which helps women and their children to get to safety, and have housing to go to, to get away from a batterer and the patterns of being abused, and to be encouraged to make choices which help build healthy lives.

Our all-volunteer staff accepts, and we support.

How about donating an hour of your income, or a day, or a week? Or what you would pay to have a safe place to let your own brain think, to make your own decisions, to sleep fearlessly?

We are severely overdue in utilities and other bills.

Please, send this to everyone to be part of helping people create new lives through supporting our Emergency outreach.

Since the 1970s Strengthen Our Sisters, the first shelter for battered homeless women and children in the United States, has been providing urgent housing and support for women, children, teens, and elders, extricating themselves from abusive relationships. Right now, we are in desperate need of funding to pay utilities, lights, refrigeration, mortgages, insurance, and to keep the emergency shelters open.

We are grassroots volunteers needing to meet real-world expenses.

You are appreciated for joining us, for the people we currently serve, and so that we can be here for people who will need us in the future.

What bills are you most interested in helping pay? Emergency 24/7/365 live answered telephones and move in? Electricity? Mortgage? Heat? Water and sewer? Buildings and grounds maintenance and improvement? Children's playground? Transportation? Court support? Literature about recognizing abuse? People moving into an apartment expenses? Safety cameras and fire prevention expenses? Anything that you feel connected to?

We are in need today. We have shut-off notices right now. Thank you.

Please now send this opportunity out to everyone and every church or other group you can. Thank you from everyone who you will now be part of creating a healthier life for.

If you think someone is being abused, please get them support now, www.strengthenoursisters.org